by Markus Pistauer
CISC Semiconductor enhances communication technologies by providing competitive and innovative products with customeroriented engineering solutions to boost performance, conformance, interoperability, security and privacy. Dr Markus Pistauer is the CEO of CISC and here he explains how the company has grown over the past 25 years to become a leading SME in the area of communication and an active member of various fora and platforms, including INSIDE Industry Association of which he is a steering board member. Headquartered in Klagenfurt, Austria, with subsidiaries in Graz, Austria, and Mountain View (CA), US, CISC is also a shareholder of the Silicon Alps Cluster GmbH that helps bring together players from industry, science and public authorities to develop and position the electronics and microelectronics sector in Austria.
Starting from nothing
When looking back to CISC’s foundation in 1999, Markus recalls how he “couldn’t have imagined that one day companies within the top 50 of the fortune 500 list would be our customers. In the 1990s when I became an assistant professor in electronics, I remember my professor telling me that a good engineer doesn’t need a computer, so ... I set my course on the growing field of simulation, or modelling languages to cover the engineering work that was being done by machines and no longer by engineers due to the increasing complexity humans wouldn’t be able to manage. I personally started coding the first models in the automotive area to see what happens if you crash your car against a wall or another obstacle, so that the airbag chip fires appropriately. I had to abstract the hardware functionality, and from that we got into the design methodology topic. I had contacts, background information to the research areas and to the activities from the semiconductor companies being done at that time in the framework of a pre-programme of CHIPS KDT. Even though design methodology was a big topic, I couldn’t secure the investments I had planned because the banks told me ‘If you want to build a house and build a nice pool, I can understand what you’re doing, but why simulation software? It’s so expensive. Microsoft products are cheap, so software can’t be that expensive.’ So, you have to swallow that and start what you have: myself and a small computer. I started to do some first models. With success. The first employees were hired, we got into contact with other companies in the research area, semiconductor companies, undertook our first funding projects and developed our first design framework to put in different models. In a nutshell, we found our niche and specialised in three areas: automotive, semiconductor companies that had to develop the tools, and RFID.”
Connecting assets with the grid
CISC recently launched Internet of Energy to its existing business lines, a fully engineered set of industrial IoT solutions for sustainable and stable energy grids. “It’s a software platform with a lot of technology insight from security and also for access to infrastructure,” Markus explains. “Connectivity is a key element in the energy market. The point here is that if you have energy assets, you want to get the most out of them. You want to be able to steer the energy demand within your personal grid, firstly by providing the energy you need and then if you have surplus energy, being able to trade that energy on the market. Our role is to connect these assets, collect the data and transfer it to a trading system. If you need to supply energy to the grid, immediately, then you need connectivity, reliable connectivity, safe connectivity. Because energy production and distribution can be a key target for cyber crime as well as physical attacks, as we see in Ukraine. The latter we cannot defend but cyber attacks we can and should defend and that’s what we’re working on, the communication in our Internet of Energy unit.”
Dare to leave your comfort zone
CISC is market leader in testing RFID and NFC, chips and labels, for both readers and labels. Product tagging is a market driver and nowhere is this no truer than in the health and pharmaceutical industry, which wants to have medication tagged, whether interacting with machines, on the body, small injectors or electronic devices. “There are still a lot of other challenges ahead,” Markus admits. “And we don’t really know what these may be or when they may come. In 2009, I remember we started an automotive project in the EV area, and the forecast was that production of road-going electric vehicles would probably be 20% by 2015. We’ve far exceeded that figure. Now, forecasts are that production of combustion engine powered cars will be outlawed in Europe by 2035. Change can take us by surprise, so we have to be ready for such challenges as a small company and be able to act fast and worldwide. That was definitely my approach in our business strategy, not to be a single supplier for a local semiconductor company. Get out of the country, get out of the comfort zone, and provide the best technology. As a small and medium sized enterprise, we definitely have more flexibility in structuring our product and development plans. You have to be fast and see the opportunities you have, but also fast in dropping things that don’t work out anymore. It’s a challenge we’ve taken up and we are doing well so far.”
A to B, wirelessly
The CISC credo is ‘adding trust in a connected world’, and this is both a challenge and a goal. “What we mean by this is adding trust in communications. In simple terms, a message goes from A to B. Is it understood? Can somebody else read it? Is it received as I sent it, or was it somehow scrambled? Is it received in time?” Markus says. “I’m pretty sure your smartphone’s technology has been tested in our lab. We can read and write NFC and RFID chips in one step, which dramatically increases the speed, the throughput in production. Incidentally, we had a nice project where we managed a sensor that’s put directly on the brain of a human and, of course, that needs some power supply without cables coming out of your skull. Wireless charging, and we designed it here. Hopefully, hearing aids or glasses in the future will be wirelessly charged, and designed with our competence. Safely and securely.”
Personal assistant
Another CISC product is COYERO, a secure and trusted technology that enables the digitalisation of various infrastructures and services in a particular city or region through a single, individually branded mobile app. It generates new business models and improves customer experience by linking various services like parking, EV charging, retail, restaurants, public transport, bike sharing, events and other attractions with one another. “Think of it as a marketplace for all your city services,” Markus proposes. “It’s essentially a platform that can put different service providers under one roof to provide services based on infrastructure. A personal assistant that you can talk to, even take care of a reservation, and can cover the entire process from selecting based on user preferences to entry, including payment. The root lies in the payment and ticketing, for which we have a patented technology. That’s some way away from semiconductors, but you have to be alert to the possibilities and opportunities, and make optimal use of your competencies. Of course, data security in any internet transaction by consumers remains a challenge, one that’s been highlight in recent hacks (Ticketmaster, for example). It’s a central theme in the R&D roadmap that we have in Europe and the strategic, research and innovation agenda with daily updates to which I personally contribute. That’s definitely a challenge we have as a company. You work on a particularly challenging technology but then how do you transfer this to a product? It’s difficult.”
European security … for back-up
CISC has two subsidiaries in the US, in California, and he recalls attending a visit some eight or nine years ago from the European Commissioner for DG Connect who said that in the US, they are very good at transferring knowhow into money whereas in Europe, we transfer money into knowhow. “This is the challenge we have. And I think even we as a company haven’t solved that yet. If we could invest more in new ideas, in something stimulated by the environment, that would be cool.” But it’s not all about making a quick buck. “I mean, we have certain standards here. Back to security. You may get the same stuff a lot cheaper from Asia, for example, but your data will not be handled with the same security as it would be in the European Union. That might be the added layer of trust because the EU is very strict with its regulation. So, you know that the quality of the products you get, the way that they handle their data is just a lot more strictly regulated. Our challenge is probably that we have to be faster or more effective, or simply provide a better product that we can also ship in time. Just to cite a large US company that asked us to be a second supplier to their (cheaper) Taiwanese supplier, they said Europe seems to be the more secure country so just in case something happened, they would like a contingency in place.”
Biodegradable materials
When it comes to future trends in technology, “we are now applying artificial intelligence in our digital assistant products to help manage what’s available on the platform for services as well as your personal preferences, without having to click this and that,” Markus says. “Also, in our Internet of Energy business unit where forecasts need to be delivered for trading. How much sun is likely tomorrow? What will be the energy use for my vehicle? How can we optimise the energy matching? Energy is a core demand of mankind. If you have energy, then you have development and prosperity. Without energy, you can’t have both. So, we need to give access to energy to as many people as possible. Simply and affordably. In times where we need to reduce CO2 emissions as well as satisfy the increasing demand for energy, something needs to be done. Optimisation of the energy assets is essential, and communication plays a key role.” In the wireless identification field, there has been a ramp up of the RFID and NFC technology widely used to optimise transport logistics and reduce efforts to monitor product origins. One interesting use case is cannabis for health. The whole supply chain needs to be identified in much the same way as it is already done for meat products, for example. And how it can be recycled. This is what we are doing here, and we are at quite an advanced stage, testing biodegradable electronics made from a biodegradable liquid. They are very small but if you’re talking about billions of those things, which makes a difference. Sustainability is an issue that affects whatever your business is. We’ve come a long way in this respect, but we must remember that the biodegradability actually takes hundreds of years.”
Opportunities abound
Finally, Markus turns to the benefits his company has derived from being in the INSIDE community. “I am convinced that for an SME networking and collaboration are of immeasurable value and working in joint research projects, being an INSIDE member brings is in close contact with what’s going on in Europe. It helps us determine our strategy and influence the environment in which we operate at the same time. I mean if you don’t stand up and express your opinion, then it’s a wasted opportunity. Here you have the opportunity to create, to be part of the process. And I think it pays off because competition is global and being part of a group is definitely better than being on your own. We have benefited a lot in the past from being part of research projects and got a lot of ideas, not all of which succeeded. But here we are, 25 years in the business. We are stable and understand that our stability and prospects go hand in hand with offering our employees excellent quality of life and prospects to grow within an innovative international company. It stimulates their creativity and passion, and generates maximum technical output.” Ateesha Sethia, Head of Marketing and Communication (USA and Europe), echoes the sentiment: “I can definitely speak on behalf of a lot of people in the company that I am not the only one who feels the same way. I think in terms of employer feeling and the belief in the company and what we’re doing is very, very high.”
Download ISSUE 7 of INSIDE Magazine via this link: https://www.inside-association.eu/publications
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