The European semiconductor centre anchored in the Czech Republic will be called the Czech Semiconductor Centre. It will start operations in March. It is one of the components of the so-called Chips Act, which is intended to strengthen Europe's position in chip development and manufacturing as a key part of today's economy and geopolitics. The centre will be based in Brno at the premises of the Brno University of Technology, which is participating in the activity together with the CTU, the South Moravian Innovation Centre (JIC), the National Semiconductor Cluster and the companies Onsemi and Codasip.

Among other things, the centre is to provide access to five European prototyping lines and chip design software, which is also part of the Chips Act. The aim is to develop new semiconductor technologies faster and cheaper, facilitate small-scale production, provide training and help access funding under European research programmes. Example: university spin-offs or start-ups will not have to buy very expensive software licences for chip design from US companies like Cadence, while at the same time not having to produce prototypes of their chips in Asia. These are big barriers to entry into the industry.

"We would like to make advances in chip design, manufacturing and advanced chip encapsulation and related areas. The vision is, among other things, the creation of six new Czech semiconductor startups, a threefold increase in the number of graduates in microelectronics and a 200 percent increase in exports of this type of technology," summarized Jana Drbohlavová, coordinator of the Czech Semiconductor Centre. The goals are linked to the national semiconductor strategy approved by the government last year. "The aim is to launch the so-called fabless sector in our country, i.e. companies that design chips and have them manufactured by custom manufacturers," said Stanislav Černý, director of the national semiconductor cluster. 

Karel Masařík, one of the biggest personalities in the industry, became the director of the European Chip Centre in the Czech Republic. Masařík co-founded Codasip, a Brno-based company developing processor cores and chip design software. Customers include Mobileye, the autonomous car section of Intel. In addition, Codasip has been commissioned to develop a European processor for supercomputers, machines on which artificial intelligence is computed. Pavel Zaykov, another Codasip executive, will also be involved in the semiconductor centre. He will be in charge of access to pilot lines and chip design software.

Europe will have five prototyping lines focused on different advanced technologies. The most ambitious of these will be at Belgian research organisation Imec, which has long been one of the leading innovators in the semiconductor sector. The European Commission pays more attention to where the tested technologies and projects go when supporting chip projects . It wants to limit access to lines or funding to Member States and close partners such as South Korea, Japan, Norway and so on.

Source: https://www.e15.cz/

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