INTRACOM S.A. (INTRACOM)

INTRACOM is the leading telecommunications industry in Greece with an important presence world-wide. It was established in 1977 and has traded on the Athens Stock Exchange since 1990 with an annual turnover of 400 million EUROs and profits before tax 80 MEUROs (1999 figures when for 2000 respectively is 550 and 105 MEUROs). The business sectors INTRACOM is involved in are: Telecommunications, Network Management Systems, Defense Electronics, Energy Management Systems, Turn-Key Projects.
INTRACOM is heavily involved in Research and Development, spending more than 41 million EUROs annually (1999, with 55 MEUROs for 2000), thus forming the strongest industrial R&D centre in Greece. It employs a large number of highly qualified Telecommunications, Electronics and Information Systems scientists and engineers (over 2000 by end of 2000). Its R&D activities focus on the fields of software for digital telephony systems, high order data transmission through optical fibers, wireless communication devices, network management systems, energy control systems, integrated wagering systems, defense systems and terminal equipment.
The Development Programmes Department co-ordinates the company's participation in a considerable number of collaborative Research and Development projects. The department has a very strong presence in several major European Research Programmes, such as ESPRIT, ACTS, Telematics, IST, Ten-Telecom, etc. The interests of the Department include Telecom systems, high-speed networking systems, multimedia service engineering SoCs, and telematics applications and tools, etc.
INTRACOM has started 10 years ago activities on VLSI design and has established a team of about 40 engineers (INTRACHIP), which has been working together for those last ten years. This group is focusing on the design of complex ICs for Research activities, requiring skills and expertise in the VLSI design of Systems on a Chip (SoC), and mixed-signal chips.
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Related Activities
ESPRIT Special Action for Microelectronics in Greece phase I
The objective of the project was to enhance the know-how in microelectronics technologies in Greek SMEs through training in the appropriate CAD tools and methodologies for FPGA and ASIC development. INTRACOM was the prime contractor.

ESPRIT Special Action for Microelectronics in Greece phase II
This was the second phase of the previous project extending to more SMEs and involving various industrial applications using microelectronics technologies.

ESPRIT ChipShop
The project aimed at the support of SMEs for the adoption of microelectronics technologies in their products. The support was in the form of regular MPW (Multi Project Wafer) runs, CAD tools (better prices for a number of purchases) training (planned microelectronics courses) and design (methodologies/flows for FPGA or ASIC development). INTRACOM acted as one of the European support centres.

ESPRIT FUSE
The project aimed to support First Users (mainly SMEs) throughout Europe to upgrade their products using appropriate microelectronics technologies and attending specialised training courses for technology awareness. INTRACOM along with 24 other centres in Europe was acting as TTN (Technology Transfer Node) for Greece technically supporting in the IC design/testing phase 15 SMEs whose applications had been considered eligible for funding by EC.
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CVs of key persons
Labros Bisdounis, PhD: Dr. Bisdounis received the Diploma and the Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Patras, Greece, in 1992 and 1999, respectively. His Ph.D. thesis is in the area of power and timing modeling of semiconductor CMOS circuits. Since 2000 he is with the Development Programmes Department of INTRACOM S.A., Athens, Greece, working on the design and development of VLSI circuits and systems. His main research interests is on various aspects of VLSI design such as: circuit timing analysis, power dissipation modeling, design and analysis of submicrometer CMOS circuits, low-power and high-speed CMOS digital circuits and systems design and System-on-Chip design. Dr. Bisdounis has published 20 journal and conference papers in these areas.

Kritharidis Dimitris, MSc. He is with Intracom S.A. since 1991 and up to 1993 as an ASIC Designer and since 1993 he is the Manager of the IC design activities in Terminal Devices department. He is responsible for the setup and operation of the IC design lab, leading a team of 12 engineers. He has designed several digital ASICs and FPGAs for telecom applications. He holds a Master of Science in Microprocessor Engineering and Digital Electronics from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in U.K. where he was awarded a scholarship granted by the Science and Engineering Research Council, and a First Degree in Electrical Engineering with specialisation in Electronics and Communications from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.

Koratzinos Vassilis, MSc. He is with Intracom S.A. since 1994 as an ASIC Designer and recently as an assistant Manager of the IC design activities in Terminal Devices department. He has also worked with Texas Instruments Ltd. UK from 1987 until 1992 in the ASIC Design Centre as a System IC Designer. He has experience in system and logic design of ASICs (STD cells, Gate Arrays, FPGAs) in a range of applications. He holds a Master of Science in Electronic System Design from the Cranfield Institute of Technology in U.K. and a Bachelor of Engineering with Honours from the University of London, Imperial college, U.K. He currently holds a patent for a "Method and apparatus for detecting a sequence of clock reference pulses" and a joint patent in "Receiver structure for Offset Differential Quadrature Phase Shift Keying".
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