20 January 2025 · 1 min read
On January 16th, the European Commission VP Henna Virkkunen announced the launch of the first 5 pilot lines for state of the art research and innovation in the semiconductor industry. This brings the Chips Act strategy into fruition and a new generation of chips one step closer to becoming a reality in the European Union.
What are the pilot lines?
The pilot lines are facilities that will be dedicated to research and development, testing, manufacturing and designing a new generation of microelectronics. The facilities will be accessible from a diverse pool of stakeholders, from academia and research institutes to SMEs and industry at large. The development of the pilot lines will, on the one hand, receive funding from Horizon Europe and the Digital Europe Programme; on the other, the investment will be matched by member states for a grand total of 3.7 billion euros.
The pilot lines will address five key areas of the semiconductor industry:
- NanoIC - Beyond 2nm leading-edge system-on-chip
- FAMES - Fully depleted silicon-on-insulator applications
- APECS - Advanced packaging
- WBG - wide band gap materials
- PIXEurope - Advanced photonic integrated circuits
Why create the pilot lines?
The launch of the pilots is in line with the EU Chips Act strategy, more specifically with its first pillar: the creation of the Chips for Europe Initiative, aimed at fostering innovation, collaboration and knowledge transfer. The objective is to increase the resilience of the European Semiconductor sector by creating strategic synergies amongst academia and innovation hubs while providing open access to research for technology adopters.
