As mentioned in my introductory post on the 2nd Chipnation Congress, I will be sharing my thoughts on some of the talks I enjoyed there. In this post I will be talking about the roundtable "GLOBAL SEMICONDUCTOR CHALLENGES", moderated by Ms. Raquel Jorge (Elcano Royal Institute’s Analyst). The rest of the panelists were Mr. José Marino (Head of the Strategic Projects Unit in the Office of Economic Affairs and G20 of the Presidency of the Government), Mr. Javier Ponce (SETT’s Managing Director), and Mr. Jo de Boeck (IMEC’s CSO and EVP).
Panel summary.-
I must admit that, I did not expect much practical information from this table, beyond some political messages, but I was happily surprised to see that some interesting information pills were slipped in (not really developed, though). In particular:
Mr. José Marino's mention about the recent launch of a 1,000-million Euro Defence fund by the Spanish Government. I guess it will be directly dependant on the new Directorate General for Strategy and Innovation of the Defence Industry. However not much practical information about its implementation was unveiled, so I guess we will have to wait a bit to have a better understanding of its strategy, and how it will interact with the EDF and with companies developing dual use deep-tech technologies receiving investing from other sources (e.g., PERTE Chip, Aerospace PERTE, etc).
The strategic indications of Mr. Javier Ponce, D.G. of the newly created SETT, who slipped some interesting pieces of information.
Firstly, he mentioned the need for a study on the socio-economic impact of the creation of a semiconductor foundry in a territory, and his frustration for not being able to find one he could use to set a baseline and KPIs to track the progress of SETT’s investments in this area. Although one might think that there should be something like this out there, given the published use cases of the impact of IMEC in Belgium (although IMEC is a very particular type of foundry) or TSMC in Taiwan, Mr Ponce mentioned that the few reports he has found lack the depth to actually be actionable.
Secondly, he confirmed the commitment of SETT to push forward the effort to build a strong ecosystem in Spain around 4 specific strategic assets, already identified on the PERTE Chip technical report:
RISC-V architecture. He did not really developed much about this, but we all know about the huge action around this architecture in Spain (e.g., the masters, and expert courses launched by the Chip Chairs that the PERTE Chip subsidises, as is the case of the new Open Architectures Microelectronics System Master in Castilla - La Mancha University, UCLM, the Spanish Open Hardware Association (SOHA), or the lively community around the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, BSC, to mention a few).
Integrated photonics, including the packaging required to manufacture photonic ICs and integrate photonics & electronics (I guess he was covering both PICs and Co-Packaged Optics, CPO). He also mentioned interest in the area of sensor development (it was not clear to me, though, if he thinking on some specific niche inside photonics/optronics, or if he was also referring to the current demand on intelligent sensors in the context of fog/edge-computing).
Supporting the companies in the Spain in the areas above with a network of manufacturing capabilities, where he mentioned his commitment to the creation of low-capacity back-end capabilities (I remember he used the expression little foundries), as an essential preliminary step before thinking about medium-high capacity foundries. He mentioned that creating this horizontal capacities are fundamental to allow the Spanish semiconductor and microelectronics ecosystem to grow, and mentioned the agreement with IMEC as a good example of what the PERTE Chip is looking for.
Creating the necessary demand for the whole ecosystem to be profitable. I understand he was referring to first, identify and second, strategically support, those industries, those niches around which Spain’s capacities can grow and consolidate. He specifically mentioned the need to develop a long-term country strategy for Spain, including actions to attract talent from abroad until it is available locally. He also picked up the gauntlet thrown by the CEO of Semidynamics in his presentation and mentioned that he is open to contemplate the possibility of pre-commercial public procurement, to support the local ecosystem, a measure its success he witnessed at his prior employer, CDTI.
Finally, Mr de-Boeck drew attention that we need to avoid being obsessed with achieving full European sovereignty. If I got it right, he mentioned that it has no sense, probably for the EU, but surely for each of the State Members, to develop a full-sovereignty in all sectors, and links of the microelectronics and semiconductors value chain. He seemed to prefer a healthy spirit of interdependence and coopetition. He praised the Spanish willingness to ensure that there is sufficient demand to amortise the costly investments in back-end manufacturing infrastructures, and his hope that, at the European level, the Chips Act will not only be concerned with supporting research and creating the necessary local infrastructure, manufacturing and design capacities, that the EU needs, but also continuing the support, so that the ecosystem can flourish, and creating measures so that the end-users downstream create a sufficient level of demand to make the former investments profitable.
Panel Take-aways.-
Summary: Sustainable semiconductor ecosystems demand national strategies combining education, infrastructure, and global interdependence for innovation and profitability.
Panel insights and recommendations. -
Prioritising foundational infrastructures, including small-scale foundries before scaling advanced manufacturing capabilities is key to gradually generate confidence and trust in the market and help the local ecosystem mature.
Fostering international partnerships with key strategic players is key to accelerate semiconductor ecosystem development and innovation in Spain.
Identifying the right niche industries and supporting them to grow until they are ready to compete in the global market can be a driver for sustainable growth, e.g., RISC-V, Integrated photonics, beyond silicon materials, supercomputing.
It is necessary to balance research, manufacturing, and demand creation for ecosystem sustainability in the long-term.
It is always advisable to align national semiconductor strategies with global interdependence for effective execution, however, we need to avoid to fight for full sovereignty in each of the State Members in the EU, better to encourage coopetition to balance collaboration and competition in international semiconductor efforts.
There is a huge talent, we not only need to create programmes to generate local talent, but also thing on instruments to retain and attract international talent to address immediate skill shortages in specific areas.
Leveraging public pre-commercial procurement can be a more effective tool than subsidies to stimulate local technology innovation and ecosystems.
DISCLAIMER: My views are my own: partial, subjective, biased and, unfortunately, not immune to mistakes nor misunderstandings on my side. In no way I pretend to be accurate in my interpretation, so please, check the original recording provided and feel free to disagree!
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