OVERVIEW OF COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS IN JAPAN AND THE UNITED STATES

Japan has used all three types of collaborative project in funding both low temperature superconductivity (LTS) and HTS SCE research over the past 20 years. In the United States, only joint ventures and distributed projects have been used. No centralized projects have been established in SCE in the United States. (Sematech and MCC are examples of centralized industrial R&D activities in U.S. semiconductor R&D.)

Japan's collaborative SCE projects are shown in Table 8.1, which gives the starting date, the research topic, the lifetime, and the style according to the three categories described above. To date, two projects of each style have been created, with lifetimes varying from 4 to 10 years -- or, in the case of the International Superconductivity Technology Center (ISTEC) in its second phase, 15 or 20 years.

In the United States, of the six collaborative activities in SCE (Table 8.2), five were (roughly speaking) joint ventures, while one was a distributed activity. In contrast to Japan, no new U.S. projects in SCE are planned, and all the current ones except the 32 x 32 switch will end in 1998.