During the month December, as reported by the eetimes website, 17 member states of the European Union have signed an agreement to contribute to the joint development of production technologies up to 2 nanometers for semiconductors, as well as for the development of low-power processors.

L total investment that has been decided amounts to 145 billion euros , a figure that will be necessary to finance the production technology adopted by future processors, reaching 2 nanometers in the next few years and which will be supplied within the next 3 years. The investment requested will also be used to to finance the development of low consumption embedded processors with custom design , which can adapt to the different needs of use. The aim is to make the states belonging to the European Union increasingly autonomous also in the field of semiconductor production, so as to make them more ready for the technological challenges to which they will be called in the coming years.

Le 17 countries, Belgium, France, Germany, Croatia, Estonia, Italy, Greece, Malta, Spain, Holland, Portugal, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Finland and Cyprus, have signed this declaration:

To ensure Europe’s technological sovereignty and competitiveness, as well as our ability to address key environmental and social challenges and new emerging mass markets, we need to strengthen capacity of Europe to develop the next generation of processors and semiconductors. This includes chips and embedded systems that deliver the best performance for specific applications across a wide range of industries, as well as state-of-the-art manufacturing progressing to 2nm nodes for processor technology. The use of connectivity, in which Europe enjoys a global leadership position, as the main utilization factor for the development of this capacity allows Europe to establish the right level of ambition. This will require a collective effort to pool investments and coordinate actions, by both public and private stakeholders.

The move of the European Union it is in fact a mirror image of what the United States and China have done in recent years . Both of these nations, in fact, are working to make themselves increasingly independent from the others in the production of their technology of the future not only in the private sphere but also in the public one. The EU intervention is aimed at making the sophisticated production technologies necessary to be competitive in the market accessible, in those contexts in which investment and research by private companies is not sufficient in the face of the high costs of entering the market. .

The world of semiconductors is one of the most technologically sophisticated and contextually onerous : Implementing a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility currently available requires the investment of several billion euros between development, construction and production. At present, Taiwanese TSMC is building chips with 5 nanometer manufacturing technology for its customers and is looking forward to the future transition to the 3 nanometer process in a few years.