Imec’s take on Europe’s leading-edge fab: ambitious, but not impossible

Last week, the European Commission presented the Digital Compass, a set of avenues, visions and targets shaping the bloc’s ambition towards “digital sovereignty” by 2030. One important pillar of the package is for Europe to become “less dependent on others when it comes to key technologies,” said Eurocommissioner Margethe Vestager. “This is why by 2030, we want at least 20 percent of the world’s cutting-edge microelectronics produced in Europe.”

This seems a daunting task. Europe’s own chipmakers left the scaling game over a decade ago, and for the handful of companies still in it, the continent doesn’t seem to be a particularly attractive place to build a fab. It might start making sense if there would be high demand for leading-edge CMOS around these parts, but, at present at least, this isn’t the case.