ZMDI

Zentrum Mikroelektronik Dresden was regarded as the heart of East Germany's microelectronics research in the 1980s as well as its most advanced integrated circuit manufacturer. Together with TU Dresden and VEB Spurenmetalle Freiberg, ZMD formed the foundation for Silicon Saxony, a cluster of microelectronics companies that came to include new fabs by Siemens and AMD .

The company was founded in 1961 in Dresden under the leadership of Werner Hartmann as a research institute with the goal of developing technologies for manufacturing integrated circuits, following the seminal patents by Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce two years earlier. Initially, it was named Arbeitsstelle für Molekularelektronik and reported to the government's Office of Nuclear Research and Technology. In 1965 the instute was moved to the combine VVB Bauelemente und Vakuumtechnik which was responsible for manufacturing almost all electronic components in East Germany at the time. The researchers manufactured their first p–n junction in 1966, their first fully working bipolar junction transistor in 1967, and their first integrated circuit C10 in a 20 µm process and with a yield of 16% in April 1968. Later that year in September the test chip C30 achieved a yield of 30%. Under the designation D120C this design was later transferred for volume production to Halbleiterwerk Frankfurt and publicly announced at the Leipzig Trade Fair in the spring of 1971, together with subsequent chips in the 7400 and 74H00 series.

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