1999-03-10 , ESC-9887
Business News From Philips Semiconductors

Philips Semiconductors, the leading European semiconductor manufacturer, has today announced a planned extension to its design and application centre in Southampton to meet the increasing international demand for products. The £5 million investment (7.3 million euros) by Philips Semiconductors will create more than 160 new Software and Hardware designer jobs over the next three years and include opportunities for both new graduates and experienced personnel. Southampton City Council has already granted planning permission for this new facility.

Construction work on the purpose built, two-storey building will begin in Spring 1999 and is expected to be completed within 12 months. Over the next three years, further investments will be made in the latest design technology to equip the new design centre, including CAD hardware and software and hardware simulators and emulators.

Philips Semiconductors Southampton is a design and application centre for silicon chips, called integrated circuits, used in electronic consumer products such as digital TVs, Teletext, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM and DVD-Video systems. Developing new products involves both hardware and software design engineers and with more than 400 people already employed at Southampton, the centre houses one of the largest and most experienced software design groups in the whole of Philips Semiconductors worldwide.

"We anticipate that 10 million homes in the UK alone will have digital TV by 2003. With the new design centre we will be ideally placed to meet the increasing global demand for high quality, digital products", said Fred Rausch, General Manager of Philips Semiconductors Southampton. "This is an exciting time for Philips, providing excellent career opportunities to design engineers looking for new challenges - we are delighted to move ahead with this planned expansion."

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the eighth largest semiconductor supplier in the world (according to Dataquest's preliminary 1998 ranking by sales). Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video, and mobile technology position the company as a leader in the consumer, multimedia and wireless communications markets. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by systems labs.