At the centre of a highly successful national collaboration, CMC Microsystems represents an industry-government-university alliance that delivers a program recognized as a model of cost-effectiveness. CMC is proud to build upon its 20 year track record, established partnerships with national and global partners and a solid history of proven results.  CMC has widespread impact across Canada, reflected in the growing collection of national CMC success stories about microsystems innovators from coast to coast.

Dr. Praveen Jain, Canada Research Chair in Power Electronics, Electrical and Computer Engineering at Queen's University, values tools and prototyping platforms provided by CMC. The researcher has put these tools to work by developing a digital power chip that addresses the problem of component strain and failure, caused by increasing computer speeds and heat. Leveraging new power conversion techniques, he designed a chip that instantaneously delivers power-on-demand to computer processors, without the need for bulky and costly capacitors that store power and regulate voltage inside a computer. Building on this initial research, Dr. Jain launched CHiL Semiconductor in 2006, a startup company with over 30 employees based in Ottawa, Ontario and Tewksbury, Massachusetts. The company has already raised $15 million in venture capital investment.

"Access to tools and technology provided by CMC increased the commercial potential of this research. There are about 400 million computer and graphics processors in the market every year and this new power management chip could be used in all of those processors. This represents a billion-dollar market."

Dr. Praveen Jain, Canada Research Chair in Power Electronics,

Electrical and Computer Engineering, Queen's University.