Belgian research center Imec and the French research institute CEA-Leti, two research and innovation hubs in nanotechnologies for industry, have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that lays the foundation for a strategic partnership in the domains of artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, two key strategic value chains for European industry to strengthen European strategic and economic sovereignty.
The joint efforts of Imec and CEA-Leti underline Europe’s ambition to take a leading role in the development of 
Source: Belgium Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperationthese technologies. The research centers’ increased collaboration will focus on developing, testing and experimenting with neuromorphic and quantum computing — and should result in the delivery of a digital hardware computing toolbox that can be used by European industry partners to innovate in a wide variety of application domains — from personalized healthcare and smart mobility to the new manufacturing industry and smart energy sectors.
Edge artificial intelligence (eAI) commonly refers to computer systems that display intelligent behavior locally on the hardware devices (e.g., chips). They analyze their environment and take the required actions to achieve specific goals. Edge AI is poised to become a key driver of economic development, and holds the promise to solving many societal challenges — from treating diseases that cannot yet be cured today, to minimizing the environmental impact of farming.
Decentralization from the cloud to the edge is a key challenge of AI technologies applied to large heterogeneous systems. This requires innovation in the components industry with powerful, energy-guzzling processors.
Imec and CEA-Leti are inviting partners from industry as well as academia to join them and benefit from access to the research centers’ state-of-the-art technology with proven reproducibility — enabling a much higher degree of device complexity, reproducibility and material perfection while sharing the costs of precompetitive research.
