Holtek to Run Their Fourth Innovation Competition

Holtek Semiconductor is delighted to announce that will run its fourth Innovation Competition on 15th November 2008 at the Mingchi University of Technology. With the competition subdivided into five groups: general control, toys, instrumentation, electrical appliance/automotive and one for high school students, participants will include students from a range of academic institutes as well as high schools and vocational colleges. Holtek will provide development systems to the value of 2 million Taiwan dollars as well as microcontroller devices and prize money approaching 1 million Taiwan dollars. On the final day of the competition, the first, second and third prize winning groups will receive prizes of 80,000, 40,000 and 20,000 Taiwan dollars respectively.

The first, second and third prizes for the high school groups will be 60,000, 30.000 and 10,000 Taiwan dollars respectively. To promote this activity and encourage participation, Holtek is running seminars during April at a range of academic institutions in the north, centre and south of Taiwan. In addition to being a forum for providing a detailed description of the microcontroller devices which will be used in the competition, a development system will also be supplied to each participant in attendance for their practical training during the seminar. After the event a development system will be provided to each teacher in attendance. Holtek therefore welcomes the enthusiastic participation of all teachers and students in this Innovation Competition. Present registration takes place online at: http://www.holtek.com.tw

Holtek hopes that through these annual Innovation Competitions to promote Holtek microcontrollers and to increase the usage of microcontrollers in the academic environment, a process which will be conducive to constructing a necessary bridge between industry and academic research. In recent years Holtek has been extremely active in setting up MCU laboratories in academic establishments, and in encouraging the development of outstanding personnel which will in turn enable Holtek to give something back to society and ultimately result in higher competitive advantages for the country.

The competition host organisation, the Mingchi University of Technology, as an innovative educational establishment, has continuously striven to encourage creativity and to provide a more refined standard of education. With its broader outlook, life skills education and its domestic and overseas practical vocational education, the school has the objectives of hoping to foster an attitude of diligency and honesty and to provide graduate students with competitive advantages. For these reasons the university has achieved several excellence awards from outside organizations.

Through this competition it is hoped that participating students, from their idea formation, through initial proposal submission, development prototype, paper submission and final product completion, will be able to obtain fully inclusive training, and from this enable students to gain skills in hardware, software and system development. In this way this activity will be able to implement practical skills as an educational objective. At the same time it is hoped that this activity will also be able to implement the educational objective of encouraging the formation of excellent technical personnel for the future benefit of industry. Such activities will certainly lead to an enhancement of the country's future competitive ability.

With a location in the prestigious and world renown Hsinchu Science Park, Holtek has firmly established itself as a professional IC design house. At the present time the company's personnel headcount stands at 358 and with a capitalization of 2.18 billion Taiwan Dollars, its business activities include those of integrated circuit design, development and marketing. Holtek Semiconductor's sales network is worldwide, having a presence in all important countries across the globe, with its plans for future increased market expansion seeing even further business opportunities for the company. With continued efforts Holtek fully intends to keep enhancing the functionality and application flexibility of its products, leading to further market opportunities.

The Mingchi University of Technology has presently three academic institutes, an engineering institute, an environmental resource institute and a management and design institute. Within these are seven research master degree programs and eleven departments. In the future it is planned for each department to have their own research master degree programs. As evidence of the university's standard of excellence, the past two years have seen it obtain an educational excellence award from the Department of Education, financially amounting to a sum of 125 million Taiwan Dollars - the largest average per student for the whole of Taiwan. This year has seen it further emphasise importance on its academic/industry co-operation as an important development objective. Additionally in 2006 the school had the distinction of winning a first place award in the "industry/academic funding and effectiveness" category, in an assessment by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan for private technical institutes. In the future the school hopes that with even closer industry co-operation to continue to improve all items of its research in terms of both quantity and quality, and to become the first choice as an industry/academic partner.