Educational computer technology device for the fast processing of multimedia content jointly developed by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics (VIK) and NI Hungary Kft.   The new hardware will have a major impact on several academic programmes at BME: BSc students will have the opportunity to learn the basics, MSc students can work with the device, while PhD students can participate in its development, stressed Rector János Józsa on the occasion of around 100 FPGA cards (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays, that is reprogrammable silicon chips), being donated by NI Hungary Kft. (NI) to six higher education institutions with the aim of supporting academic programmes in electrical engineering and IT and meet the challenges of Industry 4.0. The device was developed jointly by the Department of Measurement and Information Systems (MIT) of BME’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Informatics (VIK) and the experts of NI. The Rector, who is also the Member of the Hungarian Academy spoke highly of the relationship between the university and industry, adding that such forms of cooperation have increased BME’s reputation and the already high quality of its programmes, “therefore they have provided the basis, on which we can build continuously”.

 The educational hardware was developed at BME-VIK with the help of the experts NI Hungary Kft. The hardware is able to process multimedia content at high speed or manage the parallel analysis of Big Data László Ábrahám, Managing Director of NI Hungary Kft. emphasized that “using the device in an academic environment is very important, since it opens up new prospects in IT and electrical engineering education”. Apart from cooperating in developing these devices, the company also decided to donate FPGA cards worth almost HUF 40 million, out of which the most (60 in total) were given to Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He added: “I believe that using this hardware will lead to good engineering solutions and excellent patents”.

 As a result of the donation, BME VIK’s electrical engineering programme received 60 FPGA cards, worth over HUF 24 million, presented in special decorative boxes. The Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of the Institute of Physics at the University of Debrecen received a further 20 cards, while the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Informatics at the University of Miskolc was given 5, the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Pannonia, the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Pécs and the Kandó Kálmán Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Óbuda University each received 3.