Over the next 4.5 years, the Saxon Fraunhofer institutes IPMS and ENAS and the divisions of Fraunhofer IZM and Fraunhofer IIS will significantly expand their semiconductor infrastructure as part of the pilot line for “Advanced Packaging and Heterogeneous Integration for Electronic Components and Systems” (APECS). This pilot line acts as a cornerstone of the European Chips Act in order to push ahead with chiplet innovation and increase the research and production capacities for semiconductors in Europe. The Free State of Saxony is supporting this work with 38 million euros of funding. At a ceremony on January 30, Prime Minister Kretschmer presented a symbolic check for the funding and learned more about APECS, with a particular focus on the services that the Fraunhofer institutes can provide to industry thanks to the pilot line.

“With the European Chips Act, the EU has made a smart decision to invest in and expand European chip production. It’s vital to our society and our prosperity that Europe and Germany become more independent in this key sector. The Free State of Saxony plays a decisive role by acting as a leading European hub for microelectronics. This position is now being strengthened and consolidated thanks to the participation of no fewer than four of the state’s Fraunhofer institutes in the pilot line. Saxony is supporting this strategically vital investment in order to make Europe’s chip initiative a success,” said Kretschmer during the presentation of the symbolic funding check.

Saxon Minister of Science Sebastian Gemkow added: “Investments in semiconductor research are urgently needed. This will provide vital impetus if Europe wants to continue shaping technological advances in microelectronics and setting industrial standards in the future. The research landscape in Saxony, with institutes of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft as well as strong higher education institutions and industry partners, provides a solid foundation for this work. A large part of the funding deployed by the EU, the federal government, and the Free State of Saxony for APECS therefore also serves to benefit local scientific institutions. In this way, we’re significantly accelerating the transfer of research findings to industry and therefore also bolstering Saxony’s chip industry in particular in order to act as a driving force at the European level.”

Strengthening European competitiveness and technological resilience in the development and production of semiconductors

The heads of the four Fraunhofer institutes are extremely grateful to the Chips Joint Undertaking, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and the Free State of Saxony for their generous support. Indeed, the heads of the institutes agree that “the investments via the APECS pilot line will bring a decisive improvement in the performance of the existing research infrastructure, allowing the institutes of Silicon Saxony to explore pioneering heterointegration technologies and develop them for practical applications in industry. Companies in the immediate vicinity and across Europe will therefore gain access to considerable innovative potential in order to bolster their global competitiveness.”

APECS: Heterogeneously integrated technologies for European industry

The APECS pilot line acts as a cornerstone of the European Chips Act with a view to driving forward chiplet innovation and increasing the research and production capacities for semiconductors in Europe. The institutes collaborating within the FMD are working closely with other European partners to build up the pilot line, thereby making a key contribution to reinforcing Europe’s technological resilience and consequently boosting global competitiveness in the semiconductor industry.

The pilot line will provide low-threshold access to cutting-edge technologies not only for large industrial companies but also for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups, providing secure, resilient semiconductor value chains. APECS is co-financed by the Chips Joint Undertaking and national funding programs from Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Portugal, and Spain as part of the Chips for Europe initiative. The total funding for the APECS pilot line amounts to 730 million euros over 4.5 years.

The APECS pilot line addresses the scalable industry transfer of newly developed innovations in the area of heterointegration, especially with regard to the use of new chiplet technologies, thereby acting as a bridge to the world of application-oriented research. APECS goes beyond conventional system-in-package (SiP) methods and aims to deliver robust and trustworthy heterogeneous systems that significantly boost the innovative capacity of the European semiconductor industry.