Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS, Division Engineering of Adaptive Systems

In the Chiplet4Future project, Fraunhofer IIS is developing an automotive chiplet demonstrator for exploring future chiplet architectures. This work focuses on chiplet system integration and the interaction between substrate technology and the Bunch of Wires (BoW) interface for high-density interconnect architectures.

Dresden was this year’s meeting point for the international EDA and IC design community as host to SMACD 2026. In this interview, conference chair Dr.-Ing. Benjamin Prautsch talks about the key trends – from AI in chip design to new design methods and challenges for the future of semiconductor technologies. 

We help our customers and partners master their challenges in a practical, customized fashion using various AI approaches. Our solutions are tailored particularly to use cases in which permanent data sovereignty, data protection and high processing speed are vitally important, as well as the traceability of the processes by which the AI systems arrive at their results.

So that smaller systems providers can shoulder the growing development and manufacturing costs for next-generation electronics, a Fraunhofer consortium from Saxony has teamed up with GlobalFoundries to develop a "universal sensor platform" (USeP).

Many of the asymmetric and symmetric encryption methods currently used for the secure transmission of data and information are, in principle, vulnerable to attackers. Systems for the exchange of quantum keys allow a key of any length to be exchanged securely. In our work, we focus on furthering the development of the necessary nanoelectronic components.

Given that electronics are used in many safety-critical areas, such as autonomous driving or medicine, it is vital that users are able to trust them. Trusted electronics are electronics whose mode of operation is precisely understood – regardless of whether they were designed and manufactured in Germany or elsewhere.