Support For European 450mm Fab Strengthening

The President of Imec, Luc van den Hove, asserts: “We have a strong equipment industry in Europe and we need a 450mm platform. If we don’t have that in Europe, it is clear that, in five years time, all the development will happen outside Europe.”

Rob Hartman director of the strategic technology programme at ASML says that 450mm is something that would happen in the next five years and that: “We need to get a large 450mm manufacturing facility in Europe supported by the EC.”

If Imec, the world’s best microelectronics R&D centre and ASML, the world’s best maker of chip lithography machines agree, then it’s very much on the cards that this will happen.

Andreas Wild, executive director of the pan-European research programme ENIAC, says: “I have a strong conviction it will happen. The best way to lose in semiconductors is to bet against the economies of scale.”

With all Europe’s money and all Europe’s technology strengths, it seems delinquent not to do it.

“We have considerable strengths in Europe,” says van den Hove, “we have the world’s best R&D, top universities, LETI, Fraunhofer, Imec. We have some of the world’s best equipment suppliers. We have some of the world’s best materials suppliers. We have a strong value chain. But are we working together in a productive way to leverage this capability?”

Clearly not. Europe’s manufacturing capacity is weak. NXP can’t invest in advanced capacity. Infineon won’t. ST only invests in advanced capacity when it is subsidised by the French government at Crolles.

So how does Europe translate Imec’s world-beating process technology into world-beating manufacturing?

van den Hove added: “If Europe doesn’t work together with the world leaders, the world leaders will work together without Europe. We need to share the risk. We need to bring the best brains of the world together. We need to be global. There’s no point keeping it to Europe. Look at the Japanese who tried to keep it inside Japan. Innovation has to occur globally.”

“Imec is the world’s largest nanoelectronics R&D centre – offering value to all the key players,” adds van den Hove, “virtually all of the top leading companies are working with Imec and coming here to Europe for R&D. We have the top IDMs, the top fabless companies and the top four foundries. We have the materials suppliers and the equipment suppliers.”

What Imec’s example teaches, said van den Hove is that: “If you want to be the best in your region you have to be best globally.”