Ukrainian IT company POLYTEGA CLOUD won a grant from an EU-financed program. Ukrainian applicants are rare, the winning company develops cloud-proven tool for physical verification of integrated circuits.
Ukrainian IT company POLYTEDA CLOUD has won a one million euro grant offered as part of the EU program Horizon 2020 for development of the innovative project Physical Verification (PV) Сloud. “POLYTEDA CLOUD will get EUR 1,22 million from the European Commission for a two-year project. This is Ukraine’s first and only success in the field,” said Svyatoslav Svyatnenko, business development director at Borsch Ventures at a press-briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center. “As part of the project we will develop and improve the product PowerDRC/LVS in the cloud infrastructure along with the innovative model that we are offering,” added Oleksandr Hrudanov, head of POLYTEDA CLOUD. PV Cloud will make European industrial production and that of microelectronic circuits in particular more competitive.
The project is designed for semiconductor fabrication plants as well as for final developers of integrated circuits. “PowerDRC/LVS is a unique niche product set to automate the design of integrated circuits. We are working to resolve the problem at the stage of physical verification – the final stage of the integrated circuit design that precedes production,” said Hrudanov. In other words Power DRC/LVS helps to make the final check of whether the new microchip will work correctly. “It is a very responsible stage. The cost of a mistake may amount to hundreds of millions dollars, the way it happened with the notorious Samsung Galaxy-7,” noted Yevhen Utkin, President of KM Core and head of Borsch Ventures.
According to the developers Physical Verification (PV) Сloud is now the quickest and most precise product of such type in the world. Unique script language has also been developed that allows the consumer to describe in flexible way verification rules of almost any complexity. Clients have to be paying only for the time they spend in the cloud but not for the annual license as it was often practiced earlier.
Yevhen Utkin emphasized that it is one of a few examples when a product is being designed in Ukraine for the global market. Moreover majority of the POLYTEDA CLOUD professionals are graduates of the Kyiv Polytechnics.
The ultimate goal of the project is to collect a full kit of software that would cover the entire route of microchips development for the final consumer. “It will consent us to build a company that will be a global player and will be able to compete on international market,” Hrudanov noted. He added that other IT companies will be able to join the project.
Project developers said that they plan to establish cooperation with specialized Ukrainian universities and will be launching projects where IT sector will team up with agriculture, security etc. They will also cooperate with partners from the Silicon Valley in the US.
Svyatoslav Svyatnenko emphasized that “Horizon 2020” program is an excellent “window of opportunity” for startups that have potential to expand globally. During the project’s first stage about EUR 50 thousand will be provided, during the second phase the project’s budget will vary from half a million euro to EUR 2,5 million. However participants from Ukraine are just a few. Over the last three years Ukrainian companies have managed to attract EUR 10 million, while EU companies – hundreds of millions of funds. “We call to use these opportunities offered by the initiative, as it is one of a few real tools that allows to compete for funding and win the competition honestly,” he said. Svyatnenko reminded that Borsch Ventures helps companies enter the market, provides business expertise and helps find the funding including through the “Horizon 2020” program, so he encouraged all interested to address the company for any of the above issues.
