Transforming Europe's Semiconductor Landscape: Leading the Open Source Hardware Movement

• This article discusses the challenges and opportunities for Europe to regain its leadership in the semiconductor industry through the European Chips Act. 

• Discover the importance of collaboration between academia and industry, and the potential of open-source hardware initiatives led by companies like ChipFlow to accelerate industry leadership in Europe. 

The global semiconductor industry is complex and ever-changing. Europe, once a dominant player, now holds less than 10% of the market share, making it heavily reliant on imports and vulnerable in the face of global geopolitical tensions. Despite this, Europe maintains a crucial role in the semiconductor supply chain through key niches. For instance, Arm, a British-based company, is essential for chip design for nearly all smartphone processors. Germany’s Siltronic produces ultra-pure silicon wafers, and Siemens owns a significant part of the specialized software market for chip design. 

The crown jewel for Europe in Semiconductor space is Dutch company ASML, which monopolizes the production of advanced tools necessary for high-tech chip manufacturing. ASML’s Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) machines, costing about $150 million each, are vital for leading chipmakers to produce advanced semiconductors. 

European Chips Act

In response to the EU's declining market share, the European Chips Act was launched to enhance competitiveness, resilience, and market share in semiconductor technologies and applications. The Act aims for a 20% market share by investing €43 billion in the semiconductor industry by 2030. The investments focus on 3 main areas - including leading edge foundry facilities but also to support the design phase where Europe has only 2% global share. A key feature of the design phase investments is a cloud-based virtual design platform that includes IP libraries, Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, and support services. Europe has said that this platform will be open, fair, and transparent, promoting extensive cooperation to enable development of existing work and encourage community driven innovation.

The challenge for Europe is how to invest the Chips Act money in an optimal way from a European perspective. The leading EDA companies have their R&D operations outside of Europe. As a result, funds invested there carry a high risk of not maximizing returns for Europe. It is therefore paramount that the Chips Act funding also addresses European interests more directly.  One such approach is by investing into Open Source hardware initiatives which foster innovation and lower threshold to enter for all. The Open Source hardware approach is strongly and widely supported by Pan-European academia.

The Role of Open Source as the growth driver for the industry

Open Source is widely used in software, providing massive benefits, and is now maturing  in hardware. There are existing, commercially used hardware open source solutions across the whole Design semiconductor design phase - probably the leading solution is Darpa & Google funded OpenRoad project. However, for open source hardware to achieve a more mainstream position in the semiconductor industry and to properly support EU Chips Act key objectives, there are few things that need to happen.

Firstly, the wide academia support for open source hardware needs to become more united to a full design flow - front end to backend including key supporting tools, which provides realistic support for commercially viable advanced designs in a meaningful period of 5 to 8 years. Europe needs support for its leading edge foundries by 2030 timeframe and this would mean that open source based design flow should be able to support advanced nodes by that point. The target is challenging, but achievable, if there is a properly united effort across academia and industry supporting it.

This leads us to the second need - for industries to join in European support for open source hardware. Across all industries, Open Source software driven disruptions started from academia but accelerated only when corporate investment and their use cases joined the movement. However, the industries are unlikely to start working with open source hardware until there is more clarity on the dominant tools.

ChipFlow's Vision to Accelerate the Open Source Hardware Evolution

We at ChipFlow believe that the Europe Union through its Chips Act can play a critical role in accelerating open source hardware evolution and adoption globally whilst enabling Europe to meet its semiconductor targets faster and more profoundly. This can be achieved by enabling an open source driven design flow to be part of Design Platform and linking it to existing Europractice manufacturing capability. The flow should have clear roadmap targets that meet European Chips Act targets and thus will enable wider academia and industry support. 

ChipFlow, a UK & EU based PaaS company with a working Semiconductor IC CDesign Flowbased on open source hardware components. We are already taping out commercially viable automotive designs, proving that open source hardware is already ready for the challenge. ChipFlow will, for its part, continue to contribute to the relevant open source communities and projects, driving the state of the art. Additionally, ChipFlow will push for industry adoption by working with its customers and partners to prove the viability of open source hardware based solutions. 

For Europe to fully harness the potential of open-source hardware and meet the semiconductor targets set by the EU Chips Act, we have to have a strong, united effort from both academia and industry. By fostering a collaborative environment, we support the vision that Europe can lead the global semiconductor industry. This requires ensuring that investments yield maximum returns and drive significant technological advancements back into Europe. The support of the Union behind companies like Chipflow will be crucial in enabling wider industry participation and accelerating this progress. However, the real key is a united, goal-oriented open-source community working together to meet these ambitious targets. At ChipFlow, we're dedicated to contributing to this effort, driving innovation, and encouraging industry adoption by partnering closely with both academic and industry players. 

It is through these collaborative efforts, Europe and also the UK can achieve semiconductor targets and leadership, securing a place at the forefront of global technology.