Microchip Technology launches semiconductor wiki

CHANDLER, ARIZ.: Microchip Technology Inc., provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors, announced ICwiki —a Web site that enables engineers, students and professors working with microelectronics to collaborate and share information related to semiconductor products, applications and best practices. Using Wiki technology, participants can change content on the site and participate in Web logging (or "blogging"), voting and messaging. ICWiki is available in several different languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Russian.

Following recent trends toward online social networking, ICwiki was designed to help engineers share knowledge about designs and applications, and to help university students gain access to industry knowledge that can help bridge their transition from academia to industry. Participants can work together in either public or private blogs via the site's Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) feature. Subject areas include vertical markets such as automotive, home appliances and robotics; function topics such as algorithms, oscillators, PCB layout best practices and signal conditioning; or product topics such as microcontrollers, Digital Signal Controllers (DSCs), analog and memory products.

"ICwiki is a natural extension of the University of Microchip," said Mitch Little, vice president of Worldwide Sales and Applications with Microchip Technology Inc.

"This University encompasses not only the support that Microchip provides to universities around the world, but all training provided by Microchip—be it through our Field Applications team, our worldwide Regional Training Centers (RTCs), Microchip's MASTERs conferences or our online Design Centers. ICwiki promotes the collaboration between academia and industry that is crucial to the future of the electronics industry, and we are thrilled to be the first in the semiconductor industry to provide such a resource."

ICwiki's GDSS feature enables an author to start a new blog and invite selected members to join the group, while restricting access to others. In addition to blogging, ICwiki allows voting or "polling," where users can post a question and then view the responses online. Its "messaging" feature allows users to communicate with each other, without disclosing e-mail addresses.