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Informatics Institute Informatics Institute

iCARe project helps push chip-making machines to be faster and cheaper

26 January 2026

Future chip-making machines could become faster, more precise and more cost-efficient. This would make chips in everyday devices, such as smartphones, laptops and medical devices, cheaper and more powerful. Researchers Prof. Benny Akesson and Prof. Andy Pimentel from the Parallel Computing Systems (PCS) group at the Informatics Institute contribute to this goal through their role in the new, NWO funded, iCARe project.

The €3.3M project targets the motion systems at the heart of high-end semiconductor equipment, such as lithography machines and die bonding systems. These machines 'print' tiny patterns on silicon and place chips (dies) onto their packaging. They must move with extreme reliability and precision —often much smaller than the width of a human hair— and under tight timing and cost constraints. iCARe aims to significantly improve their performance while reducing energy use and system cost. 

Integrated design for high-tech motion systems 

Today, the key components of high-tech machines are often developed separately: the mechanical parts, the power electronics, and the control software and computing platforms. This separation limits how far performance can be pushed. 

iCARe takes a different approach. It will develop a fully integrated control architecture in which the key components are jointly designed and optimised. Take Formula 1 as an example: to reach the top, the car and the driver’s style must be tuned together and adapted to each circuit. Similarly, iCARe will treat the control algorithms (the driver), the computing platform (the chassis) and the power electronics (the engine) as one system that must be co-designed for maximum performance. The goal is clear: machines that move more precisely and quickly, use less energy, and are cheaper to build and operate. 

Computational architecture and real-time scheduling

Within the iCARe consortium, the PCS group will lead the computational architecture research. Akesson and Pimentel and their team will define requirements for computing platforms for extreme motion control and develop real-time scheduling algorithms and design-space exploration (DSE) tools. They will also contribute to system-level integration and validation.  

Professor by special appointment in Design Methodologies for Cyber-Physical Systems 
iCARe enables a breakthrough in how we design high-tech motion systems. By integrating control algorithms, electronics, and computational platforms, we can achieve unprecedented performance improvements while reducing system cost. This funding allows us to strengthen the scientific foundations that underpin the Dutch semiconductor ecosystem Professor by special appointment in Design Methodologies for Cyber-Physical Systems 

Funding and collaboration 

The iCARe project runs from 2026 to 2031 and is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under the call “High-tech equipment for tomorrow’s applications”. The PCS group will collaborate closely with ASML, which provides computational platform requirements and industrial test cases, and with Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) on integration into the overall control architecture. 

For more information about the NWO call, see the NWO website