The European Commission is giving £6.95 billion to the semiconductor supply chain.
Dubbed Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI), the funding is on microelectronics and communication technologies. The EU hopes that it will trigger £11.8 billion of private investments so that the industry will have £18.9 billion sloshing around.
This IPCEI will fund 68 projects from 56 companies from 19 Member States (plus Norway), involving 600 indirect partners. It could potentially create more than 8,700 direct jobs in Europe.
The EU expects this IPCEI to expand industrial presence across the supply chain in Europe, investing in industrial capacities on all the chokepoints of the supply chain: materials including wafers, equipment, design and design automation tools, different process technologies, manufacturing, packaging, assembly and tests, and systems integration.
Under the IPCEI, companies will develop innovative device technology including dedicated processors, AI chips, programmable integrated circuits (FPGAs), embedded memory, chiplets, optical interconnects as well as equipment and materials, in support of the development of innovative applications for the communications, automotive, industrial automation and consumer IoT sectors as well as AI, edge-computing and other markets.
