Chips for Europe – Capitalising on our strengths in semiconductor innovation and skills

[Music] video nanolab disposes of advanced technical equipment and is one of the very few universities with an iso 9001 certified clean [Music] for that return to private fundraise mostly located in asia and in particular we use tsmc foundry that is located in taiwan [Music] [Music] uh good afternoon everybody and warm welcome to this first deep dive of the eurotech universities alliance my name is tatiana panpilly and i'm head of the eurotech brussels office welcome to our speakers and our guests first of all to just mention the universities that are members of our alliance their technical university of denmark ecole polytechnique de paris eindhoven university of technology technical university of munich as well as the colipoli technique video de luzon and technion from israel with this event we are introducing a new model of policy dialogue sessions called deep dives and we are planning two more deep dives this year in autumn and we chose the topics of sustainability and innovation so please watch our announcements uh we will definitely uh invite you to our future event and we hope that you will like this model because this will allow us in-depth examination and analysis of specific topics of interest to the society academia policy makers and innovators of course in this first deep dive though um we are focusing on the semiconductors and the european chips act uh we felt that it was an important development bulls at the eu level and nationally as the member states are currently designing national strategies to increase their industrial production capacity uh to reduce their uh dependencies on international uh corporations uh the demand for semiconductors is high we all know this and there are a lot of questions to answer like what kind of chips we need what our rndi sector should do to accelerate development of the european chip industry but for this event specifically though we will focus on the role of the universities in educating engineers of the future and this is in response to the eu vision to become a leader in semiconductor technologies um so welcome to this event watch the space for the two new deep dives in autumn and also i would like already to invite you uh to the eurotech university's summer reception which will take place on the 20th of june in the residence palace and we will send you invitations it will be nice to see you on in our first physical event after um difficult times in in covid so it will be really nice to see you all there and with this i would like to welcome tasman rose who will moderate the panel discussion and this event as a whole on the today's topic and will lead you through the program uh thumbs in over to you thank you very much tatiana and as we've heard today's event is focusing on the semiconductors and our chips and that of course makes sense that our hashtag for those of you who are using social media is chips for eu so please feel free to use that if you are tweeting and if you're writing mentions on social media this event is live streamed on youtube it will be recorded and will be available afterwards to watch on youtube so you can share it and disseminate it more widely with colleagues just to give you a context of what we're going to be doing we will start with an intervention from natalie segal mahou from the ecole polytechnique de baji and she's going to give the context set the scene for us understand the socioeconomic impact of chips the different types of chips how they're used she's also going to make the link to how the chips act for europe could shape the research agenda and then i have a very exciting and and very well qualified panel i have jor kubner the director of the center for nano fabrication and characterization at dtu i have pierre achno pooh who is from the commissioner of westage cabernet and has responsibility for industrial policy and sme strategy i have daniel petit who's professor for technical education at the technical university at munich and i have the member of the european parliament and mrs penney weiss and that i'm going to ask each of them a couple of questions and then i'm going to open the floor to the audience and we rely on you to put forward your questions so please you can see if you go go on to slido you're using the chips for eu that's where you'll put questions and you should on the live streaming that you're seeing you should already see the link to the questions so as our speakers are are talking i'll be keeping an eye on the questions you've put in and when it's the moment for me to bring in those questions i will do so if you put a question and you know already for it's a for a specific speaker please let us know if not i'll just take the question i'll ask who on the panel wants to respond so that's going to be the framework for the afternoon and now i'm delighted to hand the floor to natalie segal mohawk who's going to give us the the scene setting and the context so we understand our background natalie the floor is for you so helpful so you're going to share the slides okay so hello to everyone yes i'm going to give an overall picture of uh the micro electronics design for my university uh perspective so next slide please okay so uh clearly uh we have chips everywhere uh in our private life and also you know a professional life uh so uh we have uh chips in our camera in our computer but also in uh the intro instruments that are used for medical imagings and uh so this is from the 60s and there are more and more transistors inside these chips and in particular you can see with this hyphen certain that now we have about 15 billions of transistors inside this basic so it's quite amazing next slice please um in fact there are two different types of chips so there's a digital chips that equip the current electronics devices total computers cell phones and so on and which are subject to very massive production and they are so these digital chips handles process signals um to two levels of signals zero or one so on or off let's say signals and there are also chips that process analog or mix signals so analog chips so which are used for medical emerging in cars for telecommunications and also for our research in high energy physics for for the ezekies that are designed in such a field so this product that you can see here so the the semiconductor market for different type of chips in particular for digital and analog chips which are surrounded here and you can see that there is a general growth for all types of asics so it's not only for digital asics but it's also for analog chips next slide please okay so uh you all know the this moore's laws that uh predict uh the number of transistors paired ships that is supposed to double uh every two years um and so that's why there are more and more uh a transistor uh inside uh the the chips um so uh the technologies also are uh getting thinner and thinner so um this technological noise corresponds to the uh the the size of the gate of the transistor so now uh we are using uh nodes which are smaller than 10 nanometer which is very important for high speed and low power digital circuits because the smaller the nodes the the speeder the faster uh the the circuit uh but anyway uh even if these small nodes are crucial for for digital circuits um larger nodes uh like a 65 nanometer or one or 30 nanometers are remain crucial for analog chips that are used for medical imaging instruments but also for the autonomous cars for the industry automation and so on next slide please so uh right now uh 70 percent of the wafers fabrication is located in asia and what is interesting is the plot that is shown on the right side because you can see the chip's position along the words along the years since the 90s and you see that in 1990 usa and europe uh where uh big producers of wafers so they ensure 40 percent of the productions and then you see that along the years this um this involvement uh decreases a lot and then that now uh these activities is done by uh by asia mainly so we have to understand why it is like this so so why a foundries that in principle use very little manpower because it is a highly automative process why are successful in asia and not in europe anymore and we have also to uh to to understand the links between the europe foundries and the uh the europe european universities that have been those continues in this last years so next slides please so um in the european ship's hugs those are five strategic objectives that are listed so uh the objective is first to strengthen the research and the technology leaderships the second one is the is to reinforce europe's capacity to innovate in the design the manufacturing and also the packaging of the advanced chips which is also an important part the third one is to increase the europe's production capacity by 2030. the fourth one is to address the skills for shortage and to attract new talents and to support the emergence of skills workforce and the fifth one is to develop and index understanding of the global semiconductor supply change next slide please so universities and research have have a role to play in order to to have a better uh leadership in europe in semiconductor and so the first point is of course that it is important to have a talenting and highly specialized engineers uh in order to to to ensure uh a strong european semiconductor uh industries uh for for this high level education in microelectronics designs so the universities and the researchers has clearly a role to play and we think that it's important that the teachers are also have also a design activity uh for resources in order to to ensure that they are also at the cutting edge of the state of the heart of the design so uh the microelectronics public plays uh have to train the students so uh through teaching but also through internships uh and also phd [Music] supervising but it's also very important to to to be able to keep some of these uh engineers in our research labs because the system wouldn't work so this is illustrated on this photo on the right side of this slide so it's important to have a very good interaction between the research world the industrial world and the education and an important thing is that we should increase the attractiveness of the research labs so that engineers will stay in in our labs instead of going work in the in the industry um and we think also that an important thing will be that all the european industries i mean those that will fabricate the or will perform the packaging and that will benefit from the the chips art funds they should be required to forge or to maintain strong links with the richer trade and so that's all for me thank you very much uh natalie you gave us a really good sort of background to understand just how ubiquitous chips are in every different part of our life and that also there are these two sort of very different types of chips the very small ones and also the larger ones and we so we're going to have a little bit of a conversation about those too and then finally i think you really highlighted the importance that we need to have both universities where we have the facilities the microelectronic labs and the research leaders to help train engineers of the future but also that companies that are going to benefit from the investment environment from the chips act should create and invest and have relationships with universities in order to help feed this process of engineers coming through so you've given us a really good background to our conversation thank you uh natalie let me now pass to the first person on my panel and that's your kubner the director for the center for nano fabrication and characterization at the dtu my question here is the digital transition is not just happening in europe it's a truly global phenomenon and any region that can ensure a steady supply of chips can assure their competitive future are there any areas right now where europe has a research advantage in relationship to chips i think there are there are several advantages uh for for europe but at this point uh and uh and one uh one obvious advantage is uh equipment manufacturing with uh with basically a a monopoly in state-of-the-art lithographic uh equipment um i also think that that especially analog and automotive ships europe has has a strong as a stronghold there but i think we are we are lacking in in cutting-edge note digital and logic chips we are we are lagging the overall the overall expertise to uh to go down into uh into the very small uh uh into the very small nodes analog we've got a bit of about a good background but it's the very small instead of very cutting edge small chips that we've got an issue now that that leads me to a question should we be prioritizing research into these most advanced chips that are less than 20 nanometers or the chips for everyday use where we already have a bit of an advantage what are the pros and cons of each different approach i think clearly we have to we have to move into into a smaller node or at least specialized chips for optimized for example for energy consumption and and digital logic chips because it's where the growth is uh there is also of course growth in analog and and and the trailing edge chips but but the main growth in the coming times will be in cutting-edge chips so so uh so europe has to move uh into uh into that area to uh to be uh to be a the player that we want to be and that we have to be uh given the the strategic and economic situation and and the constraints uh that we are under that the chips are basically going into everything uh that that consumes electrical energy and and we want to produce also in the future things that consume electrical energy yes when you put it that way it it becomes very clear just how much we need to invest it you know chips are used in anything that uses electrical energy and pretty much everything uses electrical energy so you can clear see just how ubiquitous in our everyday life chips are going to be let me now turn to pierre who's from the cabinet of commissioner westago who has responsibility for this the commission's just published the digital chips act what are the key goals that you want to achieve through the chips act yes thank you very much and thanks for posting this event it's true that the semiconductors and ships they were not on top of the political agenda for for quite some time even if there was some uh some initiative by the eu already a decade ago but it changed radically and i'd like to talk a bit more about the context and the natalie segaramo already said ships are needed virtually everywhere and it will be more and more the case and that's what we realize during the current shortage of ships and that was a very interesting and important lesson for all the political world and the second one is also that the semiconductor supply chain is extremely concentrated and especially some some parts of it but globally it's extremely concentrated yet companies and also uh to create the production of ships in the eu but we want to reinforce all the different steps of value chain but it doesn't mean that we want to do everything in the eu so that's a very important point i will keep of course dependency with other parts of the world but we want something a bit more balanced between between geographies and the second objective which may be less prominent in in the ships act itself but which is very much related to the importance of ships is also that we want to facilitate the adoption of ships and especially new generation of ships by the eu industry as a world because we see that as a as a key concern for competitiveness of eu industry be it of course automotive as we talk a lot about it but also else industry three or basically many many consumer goods which will require sheep so that's really our ambition thank you very much and i apologize to our audience we we lost connection with your the first few sentences i think the connection was not very stable but you were talking about the fact that at the moment it's very geographically focused the semiconductor industry at the moment and this of course creates both opportunities and risks and i think given the situation we're all living through at the moment in europe with the uh conflict right on our borders we're understanding the risks of having an industry concentrated in one area so if if i could now invite you to speak a little bit more about the research dimensions of the chips act because obviously here we've got a network of universities we want to understand what's their role in this picture we heard from natalie that we need to train more engineers we need to have universities that are able to train the engineers of the future but we also need the industries that are going to benefit from the act to create links and relationships with universities and create partnerships so what do you see for the universities in the chips act expectations are high for universities so we see them as contributors and as also beneficiaries of the act and i have to say so i did not describe the proposal itself but the first pillar is the ships for europe initiative and it's very much focused on research so we have leading uh universities we have leading research organization in the eu and we want to give them ways to continue their research and to keep their leadership and we also want to bring this research closer to the industries or as we often say bridge the gap between the lab and the fab or research and production and here and see the ships for europe initiative where in fact the real eu money will go uh we'll bring some concrete initiative like a design platform that will be available for industry but to which we hope that academies and research organizations can participate but that they can also use it for their own research and also pilot lines and that's very important because these pilot lines they will be set up by research organization and they will need help also from other universities or other smaller research organizations which have their own specialties in the field and we also think that they should use resources facilities we we also want to create competence center in the eu which will help companies to to use also these facilities and this design platform and here we hope also very much that the research organization [Music] industry was possible that they can also find phds that they can finance also a traineeship so it's a dual contribution and i very much also agree that they you can also train people for further but i wanted to say one last word on skills so we need very very qualified and specialized engineers that's clear but i also think that we need to have more people a bit more uh ships aware in the industry and here i think as well even if we don't form like specialized engineers i think that academias research organizations also can have a role to play to to help getting more uh conscience of the importance of ships and the use that can be done by industry okay thank you thank you very much apologies yes um thank you very much and i just wanted to say thank you for the questions that we're starting to see coming in i'll be coming to those in a moment but i've seen several that are really relevant for our speakers i'd now like to bring in danielle peteyk a professor for technical education at the technical university of munich if we think of chips as the hardware that are driving the digital revolution what about the software uh meaning the skills and the training to build the innovation cycles to develop and use the chips now that's already been touched on by pierre hanno but you know can you talk to us a little bit more about how we develop and train that are europe's science and technology universities well positioned to create a pipeline of highly skilled skilled workers and engineers thank you thank you for the invitation i think universities and especially research in the overlap of technology and humans are supposed to hold as you have mentioned a key role in the implementation of technical innovations in order to save and develop our production system and society if we follow this argumentation technical universities like tom have not just the mission to develop new technologies and processes but also they have a social mandate to integrate technical integration innovation into the society and especially into the people's heads and the key aspect is the idea of human-centered engineering and it's a broad field and besides others the topic of upskilling is central and that puts a focus on education or teaching and learning approaches in the interdisciplinary field of technical education so research and teaching takes place between engineering and social or human or educational sciences and in this in the disciplinary context we as a team of tomb technical education are located the aim of our work is to prepare people for the implementation usage and application of technical innovations like chips and thus to save the or to develop our production system and society further and to create a pipeline to use your word of highly skilled workers skills competencies or qualifications however you would like to call it in technical domains this is exactly what is our all day business in the projects and we already apply it not just in a small segment of engineering or engineers but especially by focusing on the field of vocational education with our networks collaborations programs for the technical teachers in vocational education our responsibility and area of impact is very broad and reaches people on different levels throughout our production system we see that beside all the effort technical education as a core idea in research and teaching in order to support people in their own development should be addressed more intensively thank you um let's just talk a little bit about the the sort of shelf life of skills the speed of technological change means that the skills now have a very short half-life a short shelf life so how can universities reinvent themselves to accompany industry and workers with this continuous skill building because not only do they have to be able to train but they themselves have to continuously train themselves so that they are able to train the next generation it's it you know somebody's been out of industry in just an academic world are they now out of date after five years how do we keep you know maintaining at the cutting edge of what's happening in industry so that the skills that they and the curricula are appropriate the for me the key aspect in education of engineers and vocational experts is the consistent and coherent implementation of competence orientation because competencies can be understood as an individual or subject related tool that is supposed to react to changing environments and activities in our production system as you have mentioned and as you have highlighted this is more necessary than ever because innovation cycles are getting faster and thus the needed qualification change in the same speed if we do not implement competence or an orientation that focus on individuals in initial and lifelong learning forms the gap between the technologies and the competent individuals is growing and insight in our programs and courses show that a coherent competence orientation can hardly be identified and that mainly the technical skills or competences of an engineer or skilled worker are focused but through the discussion in our networks and around our projects like eurotech the industry and the expert feedback shows as we all know that there is a high need to include and promote other skill aspects in technical domains as well and for a comprehensive approach we have to include the so-called 21st century skills and the soft skills and combine them with the technical ones as aims of a coherent development and address them in corresponding development approaches using up-to-date methods and for this it is necessary to break down the relevant skills it is not sufficient to talk about digital competencies you have to fill these facets of skills with content or in other words you have to make them concrete otherwise it's not possible to address them in the human's development in a structured way and we at tom have done a lot of research and concrete implementation especially on this topic we have developed a unique approach that integrates on the one hand higher and vocational education and technical domains on on the other hand it is based on a close collaboration with schools ministries agencies and companies from industry and small and middle-sized enterprises in our projects and our all a business and in this approach reach research and its implementation go hand in hand and they enrich each other and i would really appreciate to discuss and reflect on our approaches in detail in the follow-up because i see this talk just as a starting point but one thing seems obvious to me if we or the universities want to proceed in the field of technical education we all need to move we need to move on and we have to leave the ivory tower we have to go into practice we have to collaborate we have to discuss we have to listen to the peoples to the people's ideas and challenges and offer supportive as well as implementable approaches regarding the current and future innovations and this will lead to an ongoing change in the benefits for the people our production system and our society thank you very much danielle a very clear message on on you both the importance of you know upskilling in in the universities but also remaining completely relevant to the kinds of of competencies and understandings that both students and the the professors and the teachers need to have let me now bring in the final member of my panel that's a member of the european parliament joining us from strasbourg presumably there's a plenary session going on so it's mrs pena pernilo weiss let me now ask you the chips act is a way of leveraging the state aid regime to meet our strategic economic goals and we heard right at the beginning that europe is doesn't have the position that it wants in terms of strategic autonomy or leadership in this area so in your view the chips act and using the sort of state-ed regime to to leverage this position is this a sustainable solution to the chronic shortage of chips that we heard about earlier that is holding back our industrial development uh thank you thank you for giving me the floor and thank you also for inviting me to this very very important uh event uh because um yes we need to get out of this chronic situation as you describe it both eu and u.s is lagging behind and we cannot do what we have promised the next generation and the coming generations of a more healthy greener more sustainable europe that leads by our example the rest of the globe in the right direction and we need this twin transition of both the the green and digital transition to move faster and and better not only by our promises and higher ambitions but actually also by providing the toolboxes that are needed and their semiconductors the chips is is core and essence essential to that and i think also that i speak on almost behalf of the whole uh parliament when we say that we have waited for this uh chips act for very very long um and also that we um applause that now we have it and that the negotiations in the plenary uh yeah in the between the parliamentary groups have now started and what we really want uh in order to succeed the goals but also in order to i mean coming from my political family uh the danish conservatives and the european people's party we um [Music] we accept to use day date when it's needed but it's it's a tool uh to to move any challenge into a sustainable and and self-sufficient uh situation as we did in denmark with the windmills and that you see there is a missing link in the market that we need to push forward in order to to provide a strong economy and and and the toolbox of technology is needed to do so but saying that uh it's all so a couple of minutes to trial uh so we hope that this act will swiftly be adopted that is a very very crucial for this term that we we finalize during 22 hopefully then that can be adopted and put into use in 23 24 ish so that both the the environment on universities of research and development innovation because that is where eu still is very strong that's the core essence of being a european and that we like to to research we like to question whether we can do tomorrow better than we do right now and in research and development we have a strong uh tradition and culture for doing so so we just need to go back to to what we are best at namely research and development as the one part of the chips act but also by when we do it that we provide a healthy and coherent ecosystem that also includes the smes of all scales and sizes as well as also that we do it in a way uh where we focus on skills and also how we can leverage the competences needed along the way because we we have also to be realistic that it's better to to work step by step in the ecosystem so that we create kind of a optimistic ripple effect so that we do not uh over burden uh with too many expectations and too few uh financial tools uh and and steps along this the way to uh to to to have the needed skills uh for every different kind of of sector in the future hopefully i think i will stop here because i know you have a question number two i do indeed and basically i wanted to know you know how do we fund this this you know this vision change is absolutely huge as you say with two minutes to midnight europe is lagging behind and yet this is so strategically important to the vision of the kind of industry the kind of society the kind of lifestyles we want to have so you know how do we invest in this how do we fund the chips act that's a very good question and we need both the public and private funds to work together and there are suggestions in the act come from the from the commission side that addresses uh these issues uh here and it's a huge amount of money that we actually need i i don't think i've heard that in the palace so far but i saw yesterday as someone making this estimation that if we set the goal that the eu should actually have 20 percent of the global uh chips production in 2030 then it takes several hundred billions of euro to do so uh and that is also why we have to be very careful how we fund pillar when the pillars as well as also that we do it uh on the frameworks of the horizon europe excellence um and that goes for a lot of other investment issues that we need to see public and private finance to go hand in hand i really would like to underline that very very much and i also will not waste this opportunity also to underline that besides what we do in in between the eu institutions and i know of course the council is a part of that but added to that that also in the council there is a gentleman agreement at least that in order for the national budgets for research and the national uh initiatives to examine to have more women in stem but also to work much more closely with the digital uh skills transition in every sector in the member states on the core industries that are represented in each country there i would very much like to see more performance and it's not about me coming from a nordic country saying we know what to do and we are the leading role models here if we look very closely to the the national budgets on research to the universities they do not uh in average um present three percent of of the annual fiscal fiscal budget and that is a problem i mean both to the right and to the left of the european uh continent uh u.s china korea japan etc are using more money on the universities on research on education and that cannot go on and that is also why i would like to just do a little alert on the negotiations of the chips act that don't that don't even think that that solves all problems there are other initiatives other obligations that uh flies a little bit under the radar in the member states that needs to to be published uh and speed it up uh in action sorry to say be so blunt but i think it's important to do that now also because we are addressing the next and the next generation of young people looking at us and they know that it's a that we're talking about a green and a digital um transition all young people deciding what education they wanted to to do are referring to either they want to save the climate or they want to be a part of the digital innovative future and we need that for the chips act so let's use the lingo also when we address uh how to finance um this that they can see by the end of the day i can also get a job uh either in a public in a private sector and also coming from my political family i hope to see more private enterprises and more private uh jobs to be created in the the the outcome of the chips act and therefore also i need to underline that when we talk about financing uh side by side with some of the other uh parts of the chipsex proposal that we need to be very careful not to overburden the smes with a lot of extra obligations that are out of proportion and that and doesn't add to to the value to the ecosystem development of of semiconductors in general but also that the in that smes of all colors and all uh specific profiles especially in the time we are living in right now post uh co with uh recovery we are at war and the climate targets are still getting higher and higher because we are getting closer and closer with less and less time in front of us we need also the smes to really take the positive yes hat on and invite chips in their industries and their branches because they can see a smooth easy way to do it and also the easiest accessible answers to how to get their initiatives funded but also where to get the skills uh to their workers thank you pernille i think it was a very interesting and very important recall to everyone that you know of the oecd countries very few in europe are anywhere near the three percent investment of gdp in research and development and that partly explains where we are competitively good to other parts of the world which invest a lot more exactly exactly so let me now bring in some of the questions and the the chat is really filling up i've got lots of questions the first one i'd like to um bring in we've got a couple of them highlighted on on the screen and let's start with the one about you know what is the eu strategy about are we trying to get us and taiwan chip leaders to come to europe or are we trying to create our own european unicorn if you like to have industrial leads in europe that are closely linked to the r d network so maybe a pie no i could invite you to look at this from a political perspective from the commission what are you hoping to achieve and then maybe your you might also like to reflect on this but piano what are we trying to do attracts to europe the lead chinese taiwan u.s to come and create their filials here so at least get a toe in the market or we're actually trying to create european industrial champions what we are trying to do is to secure the supply chain very shortly as i explained before uh and for that what we want to attract in particular all these first of a kind project as we explained in the ships act so project of an innovative nature but it can be in different ways it can be smaller or not it can be many different other innovation power efficiency and so on and so forth so then you just have to look at who can deliver and some of this project may be for europe and companies but some other maybe for big international players they're already dubs for example in the market that intel itself could make these smaller nodes so i don't think that any uh current or coming eu industrial players could do it better but we will look at all projects and i'm sure that there will be both international and and european projects but the objective is not to create a european champion from this crash that's clear thank you york uh maybe could i bring you in um we also had a related question to say are we competing with or working with the us on semiconductor r d so perhaps you might like to reflect on that as well when you're looking to see should we be going for european champions or to attract us or taiwanese leaders to europe and then are we competing or collaborating you're a mute sorry thank you uh yeah that's that's a very good question and uh and i think the uh the immediate answer and i will come also a little bit to the to the skill building there because it's it's very important also in this respect is that that we have to build clusters because everything uh what is uh what is everything that is big around especially this very uh diversified very specialized industry is to have a cluster around so if we have the more we have um the easier is is it to develop there's a snowball effect in in in that kind of because it's it's complex and and part of this cluster is of course trying to get the initiatives and and grow them maybe maybe also regarding newer chips and newer technologies but also a build on what is there and invite invite the the leading companies to be here and and and that cluster will exchange knowledge and workforce and and uh and skills and and then and then we can build we can build on each uh other there it's also important i think concerning the the skills because because one of the in the bottom of the pyramid there is there is a qualified there's the qualified workforce without the qualified workforce will not get get anywhere in building a ships industry in europe and and and it is a extremely complex world to build ships i have said that before and and i'm repeating myself here but but the there's a there's a saying uh in in this uh in this industry that uh making chips is not rocket science it's much more complicated and and and therefore this means that that when we have want to to educate engineers we have and it's a hands-on training it doesn't for for for for the chip manufacturing it is a hands-on training we cannot uh there's no immediate use in in theoretical education and chip manufacturing it is inside the clean room at the machines that we have to educate these engineers and and these machines have to be state-of-the-art if we want to educate state-of-the-art engineers and these machines are expensive and the clean rooms are expensive so we have to build the capacity to educate these engineers inside the clean rooms at state-of-the-art tools with a necessary throughput that means that that means we have to have the capacity to uh to educate these engineers and we have to start to build this capacity as soon as possible because because as we are at the bottom of the food chain here with the skills it takes five years to uh to uh to produce an engineer and and and and if we go even higher because a lot of them will we'll need phds to uh to solve these challenges so it's another three years and of course we can we can kind of cross train and and and a lot of uh master level candidates will be qualified to take up a phd in semiconductor manufacturing but it's at least three years until we have the phds out in in the other end so so i think this is an important factor to to build the whole thing up that that we create capacity for uh education and of course we have to have the research based and and skill based uh teachers and and uh professors to uh to to do that and and i think we have uh we have many of them around there also very good people in industry that can that can help but it then again needs a collaboration industry a university to build these kind of skills when we have these skills and we get we get big companies in to to do cutting-edge notes into europe and we're starting to build other maybe more new newer technologies up in europe from scratch then then we have brought things together and then and then and then we start rolling and and we can actually create this snowball effect and of course it needs also the other things that are mentioned in the chip act it needs it needs us subsidizing uh from uh in in in finding locations there has to be fast subsidization of uh like all the things they also do in the us and and asia to to put money into into the system they have to be also there because otherwise would be out competed thank you and natalie i saw you nodding a couple of times um as york was speaking is there anything you might want to add on that sorry you you were nodding as as speaking so i could see that you agreed especially when he was he was saying look universities you have to have the clean rooms you've got to be you you've got to have the spaces for engineers to actually get hands on and do this so you have to invest in that you've all you've got to keep up to date so and i could see you nodding so i wondered if you wanted to add in about a comment there on what he was saying about the role of universities acting as a magnet for talent but they need to have the physical capacities in the infrastructure to offer that cutting-edge space for us for for the design itself we don't need a specific facilities because uh we use uh software and so on but uh uh i think it's uh yes education of uh talented engineers is very important and so this is something that we can do through internships phd's teaching as i said before so it's very important to have a high level educated engineers but we don't need specific facilities in our case thank you danielle uh danielle and york you've both got your hands back in so danielle go ahead and then i'll come back to you york so so maybe um i can jump in there what what york said um what we see in different initiatives around europe and the around different levels in our educational system that this is exactly what is going on the the institutions are trying to find approaches or yeah building up um rooms and then finding approaches where a connect connection between knowledge and understanding and the application of the knowledge takes place for example as you know at dtu at autumn they are working on on project-based learning approaches and i think this is a kind of of of the future of of of learning in in technical domains on the one hand to stay resilient we have to have these these these backgrounds which come from universities from from our professors who are doing uh research in in this field but on the other hand we need the companies because they know exactly how the application of of the understanding of the knowledge of the backgrounds how they look like and this is how we like to to work or how we work in the eurotech project we we want to bring together the people's experience and expertise to say how does the the field of action or the environment of work looks like and we have to to to sort the ideas of knowledge of of the things which are necessary to act in a competent way in these environments these have to come from universities because this is their big strengths so it's all about bringing the people together combining different expertise so that we we we create these these work workforce um york already mentioned several times in in this ideas thank you yo go ahead yeah i think first of all i think we have to make a very clear distinction here between chip design and chip manufacturing because because it's it's completely uh it's completely right what natalie says if we're talking about design which is as important as manufacturing because because if there's nobody designing chips we don't know what we want what we should manufacture so so and there's a lot of ib and knowledge in in ship design as well but but uh for chip design is it is software but for manufacturing if we want to have the fabs here in europe it is absolutely necessary that uh that that we have the uh the the skills and and the the facilities to to educate these hands-on engineers in inside the clean room now here at the dtu we have done and we have done that for for more than 20 years now we're actually educating from the bachelor level engineers on machines that are also used for production for companies so so we're putting these these students together at the same machine in the same clean room with with companies that are manufacturing on the same machines that has a lot of challenges for us running a clean room and and and doing these because yeah things can go wrong and but but the benefit is is is there immediately because because the benefit is is is what daniel says and the other benefit is these these companies they can hire the students as engineers and they are already trained at the machines that are used for production and development and training engineers for an industry in the clean room is extremely expensive at our clean room it costs around 100 euro an hour to be in there plus the machines that that is used so if we have a company that has to hire an electrical engineer and train her completely up in in the clean room inside the clean room for a year or so because that's what it takes there is a there's a huge threshold to to do that but if we have engineers that are already trained and they have seen it maybe they have seen this these engineers in the clean room they know each other on beforehand they are put to relevant tasks they know what uh what the industry wants what they what they like to see then then the whole thing is going very much faster and and and is accelerated and everybody knows what he or she gets when uh when when people are leaving the university and going into industry and production so so this is enormously accelerating and lowering the threshold to get started with production because it's lowering the investment in in people thank you daniel did you want to add a quick last point before we move on to the next question maybe just an additional short idea um we are currently working exactly with these these ideas to find out and to combine the the the research on finding the new and relevant skills by combining research on skills or competencies in the processes of developing new technologies for example in additive manufacturing and i think this could be something very very relevant and interesting for other other technical innovations to combine the processes of the development of new innovation in technologies for example chips with the findings or the research on what skills and competence are needed in these technologies areas thank you let me now move on to another topic and we've had a couple of questions in the chat and panila i'm going to come to you because you mentioned the green transition and the digital transition and a couple of our questions have come forward specifically looking at this balance between sustainability and environment and the digital transition and so let me give you two questions i think are worth exploring is the eu considering the possibility of a more ambitious new greener or more sustainable infrastructure for producing chips beyond state-of-the-art production so this is precisely to say you know are we instead of just saying state of the art so latest design but looking for ways to make them really at the forefront of the green transition as well that's a very interesting uh question and very relevant and i don't think it makes sense to say no to that also because when we talk about ecosystems and also as described by by york this co-creation uh between businesses and and students and researchers we need to to work on the infrastructure and we have the green transition as uh the absolute um uh hot not hot potato but it's it's it's a plate that becomes more and more hot because it's not something that we die from next week and and every challenge that can be put to the next day's schedule or to next week's schedule uh they just grow in in in in their explosiveness uh so i think it's very very crucial that we focus on also the the climate related infrastructures and where and that is where i i hope to see some maybe some amendments to the chips act coming forward and being sent to the environment but also that we after the chips act has been uh been adopted hopefully also it entails this idea coming from the eu climate law of climate partnerships that i think that we should have partnerships uh on semiconductor industries uh in order also to have the the the best um framework of a guilty between uh researchers industries uh and and how what we cannot foresee uh will be challenges in the future are opportunities in the future that we can react on them uh immediately and that is also a part of of the infrastructure of policy and and co-creation in between institutions private and and and and public uh is specifically focused on on how to reach the climate uh goals uh by being a leading example of how we do it but also it because the the consequences of of the climate change will have a strength uh and that will uh outplay the pandemic many many times but we don't envision that uh yet but i think we have to take that threat more serious as we do now and the proposal of infrastructure focus is relevant in that uh respect also to to be all be that it's possible to take the infrastructure approach and prioritize where do we get the best cost efficiency and cost benefit of what we can do because it's not only a matter of of state aid of the the size needed but also how we actually can swallow the elephant uh in the way that we create kind of a ripple effect but also a clever snowball effect uh that we start the right place thank you and and on a related issue we had another comment to say that you know many devices actually have multiple chips inside them and is do we have a risk of creating you know huge waste new waste pile of chips given that it isn't as simple as one chip one device one device might have multiple chips in and you know we might be you know if we race to create more chips we might be creating a new problem just like we had to create the the wii directive dealing with electronic waste you know a decade ago yeah yeah yeah well there we hopefully we are helped by both the policy and and the tools to for of circular economy that we are not longer uh talking and thinking linear but also that the global political changes uh both because of the corona and before that the china u.s battles on on trade we have learned bitterly how important it is also in terms of raw materials that we recycle and also that we have that we do better assessments of of where to use resources that we have but also that we design new products in ways that we can defragmentize again and use the materials i really hope that that will not be the missing link of understanding because we really really need to do so i'm working right now with the recasting of the waste shipment regulation and that is actually one of the the challenges in the recasting how to make the european waste go in circles also when they in the open economy go in as white circles as it reaches third countries both in and outside oecd uh and that is where we have also in the frame of of the digital chips act also some concerns to be paid on how we can grow a sustainable and reliable international cooperation not only on on research and innovation but also how industries that are actually global in in the in their core sense that the way we open up and continue to open up the global competition in a healthy way it also not creates this bulk of of of waste of chips that are lying around and doing harm to the environment and and also social issues thank you pierre no i might if i can come back to you um perhaps you'd like to comment on this challenge that we've just been speaking about which is you know balancing the digital and the green we've understood the importance of going investing heavily in chips making sure we have our industry in europe and the supply but you know how do we balance that out with the green issues and then we do have one question from the chat that's very specific to you um which says that the chips act allows extra support for first of a kind facilities don't we need more than only the first new fab to reach 20 market share so that's the second question but first maybe you could comment on this issue of getting the green and the digital balance right yes thank you but first i would say that we see the ships also as a tool to contribute to to the green transition because they can also help to save energy by themselves the use that can be done and second i would also say that the ships themselves also have to improve their energy efficiency and that's one of the way in which they could also uh uh research research should go and and that will be part i think of the work of some academia and research organization but then of course there is a question of the ships themselves at the end of life and we should avoid indeed the piling up of material which is difficult to recycle so that's also something that we need to think about and there are many uh horizontal tools i think the member of parliament mentioned the waste management directive but there are other also in the in the design of the ships that we may have to think more and more about it and there are also research i think in the materials that can be used in the ships for the future that could also help us to to to solve a bit this issue so uh but i would not say it simple because it's not um but but we think that we will come with proposals also to help in this regards um i see that jorge has already already since then so maybe i replied to the other question later as you want okay york if you want to come in on this and then uh piano i'll come back on the question of first and the kind yeah one way or the other thank you uh but i i completely agree with pierre but but i i i also could imagine that that as an as an example of where the universities come in and where collaboration between industry and universities come in because because there are used gases there are used things in manufacturing that are that we know are have a large carbon footprint and that can be at least principally be be avoided um but there are industries done not and nobody if if you make ships and buy buy um manufacturing plants for for billions of euro and nobody wants to take risks unless things are very very very uh carefully investigated and these kind of investigations and experiments that are needed are kind of island projects for for different processes that can be in that can be investigated by universities in collaboration with the big chip manufacturers so so there is there is uh there is a in a way a good example for for because at universities we cannot we cannot go into a big production line the the the machines the production lines are too expensive we cannot run the same machines that that cutting edge nodes are running with machines that cost 150 million euros no university has has can afford these kind of machines and cannot afford running these machines but we can solve problems that that arises with these machines and we can solve problems here and there and and these problems might as well be related to how to make a greener production and and how to uh how to uh how to get get uh reduce the carbon footprint in in the in the chip manufacturing so so this is a this is a good example i think where where one can one can have nice collaborations uh efficient collaborations between the universities and and industry excellent thank you viejano if i could invite you to come back and and comment on this question about if you're going to invest in first of a kind that that makes sense but don't we need more than just one big facility if we're going to try and reach the 20 market share by 2030. yes no it will not be easy to reach the 20 market share so that's already a first remark that uh that's the objective but that's definitely ambitious and we are aware of that but then on the question of first for kind i'd like to to also yes with a comment made by by the member of bayern before on on the investment needed so we need i don't know if it's hundreds but we need dozens of billions of euros to manage to get to this 20 percent uh target so the question there is what is the role of public power in it and and the public power we think in the commission and then public finance they should focus on giving the tools to the industry so that's a bit what are discussing the staff innovation and standards to strengthen the forces uh the connection is really cutting in and out i wonder if you could switch your camera off and maybe that would allow us to to hear you more clearly yes okay that's better thank you apologies and we'll see our only go it was yeah so i was saying we've got to make a choice where we want to put the public funds and we think that it it makes very much sense to focus on first of a kind when we talk about public fundings because that's where is maybe a market failure it's very hard for companies to find the money because we are talking about very large investment and to take the risk alone to make this production facilities so here we really see a need for a public intervention to come and to provide enough aid but not not more but enough faith so that the project can uh kick off then also i mean there will not be only one first of a kind so there will be a few or at least we hope that there will be a few we'll see what is really interest from private investors but we will have different projects and for what is not first of all by definition it means it it already exists in europe at the moment so what we think is that by uh giving the tools to the industry they should have the possibility to develop themselves business models that have already proved to be resilient and that they don't necessarily need additional public support as such for the production facilities thank you pierre no we have a uh quest a question that's come from the audience and i'm not sure who on the panel wants to pick up on this but i think it's quite interesting which is you know talking about you know how do we build the needed faculty or the capacity to develop the talent for chips because recently there's been such a focus on ai quite legitimately again in the same case that the eu has found it's fallen behind in artificial intelligence research it sees it as strategically important we've had a lot of focus and initiatives on it but that has you know leaves universities perhaps with a difficult choice do they focus on the the data the ai or do they focus on the physical the hardware the chips etc and i don't know who who from my my panel might like to respond on that but you know how do we get that balance right because ai got a lot of focus and now we're saying chips and are they incompatible as visions york or daniel i'm i'm wondering if one of you we might like to pick up on that or panini as well yeah it's it's a difficult question i think i think the uh the trivial answer would be uh we have to we have to focus on both uh uh in a way and and of course of course uh it is i mean i i would say but but that's also because i'm biased from where i come from uh we we can't use ai if we don't have any chips to run it on so so so if we take if we take a chicken egg problem then then we have to lay the egg first and then get the chicken out of it at some point so so so but but i don't think it's an either or because people are people are not universally interested and and there and there maybe uh maybe daniel might might have a good idea on how to and how to direct people to it to a certain area i think already the attention that ships have received now due to the chip crisis and and and what we are doing right now panels and and news and so on there is an interest for young people that that they can that they can kind of uh coin a little bit part of the world by by by doing what uh by by being there and and and taking a part of this and solving this crisis and i think i think that will that will give us more people and the faculty of course it's it's it's trained people and and we have we have we don't have but a lot of cheap design but then then where is the all the chip design taking place it's actually most of the chip design is taking place in the us so let us try to recruit a few people from from where their design ships and where they have the capacity maybe some people from the industry abroad would like to have a nice uh faculty position and and do something else so so i think we have to be creative and think and think where can we get that are there some extremely talented young people that we can promote a little bit faster that in the academic circles we tend to be a little bit careful with the with uh with promoting people and and and and sitting people into a position of high responsibility maybe we can be a little bit faster there all these kind of things i have i think we have to to do all these kind of things in order to uh to get there thank you and um daniel just before i bring you in we've had somebody comment from the audience to say they're both important but the teachers skill set are not the same and i think that's that that was the question that we were was trying to be picking up on it's clear that we need a huge number of engineers whether they're data engineers software engineers or whether chips engineers we clearly need more across that entire continuum that's able to operate in this area but um it's this teacher skill set that perhaps you might like to pick up on yes maybe in first in addition to what york said and what penile already pointed out is i think the only possibility we have is we have to increase the selection and this should not just start in higher education we should or have to start very early in these processes in primary education to open up the field that we we we do not lose these these talents and and i think the the the big chance is to bring in the the technology and the the things the people know yeah in in schools the children know these these chips that these platings which are in in yeah in their in their everyday um artifacts technical artifacts we have to bring them to school and show them that it's not nothing you've already used the word it's not rocket science it's something which you can learn it and which is um yeah handle or which is possible to learn or to to work with and it's totally right that um the the the competencies or the expertise of the of the teachers um yeah they are growing all the time but what what we see is there that the not the technical skills is the problems very easy to have programs in in in upskilling in the in the technical fields what dramatically changes is the aspect of information and here we go into the field what i mentioned as soft skills yeah when if you have a closer look at personal or social communicative competencies this is where we have to make our teachers fit because it's a it's a different approach needed to to learn or to generate these or to develop these competencies on the learner side yeah and what i mentioned with the the aspect of information we need we need um we need to to educate the future experts in being being prepared for having these this huge possibilities to generate information and to find them and use them in their all-day business and this is what is what dramatically changes in these new innovations and this is where where we have to to focus on in in teacher education but also in the education of of uh the skilled workers thank you um we're coming towards the last sort of seven or eight minutes of our our session today and it's been very interesting and i i think i'd like to just close by asking a question that somebody in the audience has has said which has said you know do we have a research agenda that's been developed with consensus research agenda on what needs to happen we've talked a lot about the role of universities as a place of training as shortening the lab to the fab we've talked about them as a magnet for skills we've talked to them about you know developing the workforce of the future do we have clarity on what a research agenda would look like to help deliver on the digital uh the chips act and if not you know i assume this is this is a call for us to make a first step to get a consensus um about you know what what the research community could do and panilla i see you you've got your finger yes i i would actually applause that that you do because i think we are at the core root of of what are one of the reasons for why we are in this chronic state of that we need uh semiconductors and chips um and also because we have kind of blurred ourselves into a sleep uh in eu that research and excellence is something some that that doesn't need uh maintenance and it doesn't need to be reiterated and articulated especially in between member states and the eu institutions we take it more or less for granted and we don't all and not all necessarily have this strong [Music] understanding of research is actually needed for us to to tackle the current and the upcoming challenges that we see are there and that's a lot of politicians uh uh think we can solve by just raising the ambitions saying someone should do something about it uh so i think uh if we could also give uh the understanding of the european way of research uh renaissance in uh in in the chips act uh and as a strong part of how to bridge the twins the green and the digital transition that could really be something that also could unite us as citizens as countries in a way that we really need for the moment also and that was my reflection when i heard the q and a just before on on on how to engage also not only inside of universities and in between the universities that we are talking about a huge amount of public money to be used uh in in ways that can make others envy but also that can uh can create misunderstandings amongst some public stakeholders and also in order to prevent that that grows in the political environment in a populistic way also therefore it serves the purpose that we open up as much as we can without the destroying confidentiality and and and and the potential business creation as much around this issue here to talk how important research is for europe to stay europe i mean one of my previous uh colleagues in the danish conservative party and he was actually the foreign minister and he was the chair for that long of our party he said that europe is the continent of people who doubt and he really meant that very positively because we have because of our values our freedom of academic our freedom of speech our open economy we have uh we that is how we are the doubters that we can do better tomorrow but also that we share together that we must do better tomorrow because we are a continent that can lead by our example not because we want to be the leading example because but because we can see that we have the best toolbox also of values to do so in an agile way that also respects the fact that society is changing all the time new knowledge creates new possibilities so we don't need this totalitarian way of of approaching uh our world and and the way we are in it so yes i applause very much uh something if you can initiate that together with the the backstage of this events that we opened up this possibility thank you thank you i think that's a very positive message to get such a you know open and honest response to say yes absolutely we need a research agenda that's been developed for that that helps you know shape the political ambition is there the european uh chips act but to make it happen we need it you know it's built on a strong academic foundation and we need a research agenda york i see you've got your hand up and i'm going to also invite danielle to respond on that as well in our last few minutes do we need a research agenda yes penny says yes we want one yes of course sir bernie is right we need we need a research agenda but i think also we have we have to to to really remind ourselves and and i'm i'm blessed with a political naivety because so i can i can just say that we we also have we have a task at hand here we uh the chipset is pretty concrete we want to be at 20 percent by 2030 and and and as said before the the chip manufacturing lines are so complex that uh that uh that it's it's a huge companies that that have the the intimate knowledge about these uh things so i think i would really and and maybe i'm also talking against um i'm i'm employed at the university but but in this case if we if we want to succeed there the industry has to lead the research agenda because otherwise we're doing research and and we can do basic research and and all that and this is very necessary and we should put more money into into basic and more open research but the european chipset is a very concrete thing and it's uh it's the industry that has to make it happen the the the additional 10 so it has to be the industry in that case to tell to tell the universities we need knowledge there we need knowledge there we need to investigate this can you help us to investigate this part and and to make that happen of course there has to be some funding mechanisms and even some money has to be channeled through the industry into the universities i don't like that in principle but but but if we want to get there if we want to fulfill the task that we have set us here with the european chipset i think this is the way to do because otherwise we are not focused enough to uh to get this additional 10 so so so it's the industry that has to together with the university but the industry has to take the lead in in making the the research agenda otherwise otherwise we're doing a lot of nice research for the distant future but we're not succeed with the european subject thank you daniel you are nodding quite a lot in our last could i in one minute please could you just give your additional comment yes we clearly need a research agenda but we have to step outside our comfort zone and sometimes do the things that we're not very comfortable with to make it happen so i could state yes and i could repeat what the others already said but i would just shortly state that with regard to the mathematical logic that it's the technical innovations around the chips act are necessary but the humans are the sufficient parts and aspects in the whole game and this is what should be implemented in the in the research um agenda as well thank you um just again in in in the same sort of one minute piano if i could invite you to to reflect on it's becoming clear there needs to be a sort of consensus a development of a research agenda that underpins and supports the chips act you know we've heard a strong welcome from the european parliament is that something that would be welcome also within the commission sorry a strong support for what sorry for developing a research agenda on the chips act yes of course of course it is but i i think that there are already ideas floating around to be honest and uh and and we want to to to work this way but uh in indeed and i will those very much agree with what the york said we also need the industry to build a bit and say what is relevant also for for the future and what needs to be really developed and that it's not a research which remains only research i think that's the i try to explain these subjects that we bring all that to the market and that we manage to make the link between research and industry great well i'm going to bring this webinar to a close it's been extremely lively extremely interesting i thank you all for participating we didn't have time for all of the questions that came in which tells us that there is a strong interest i want to say a thank you to all the members of our panel and for you to participating what i've taken away from this is that this is the beginning of a conversation and tatiana said there are two more deep dives planned later this year but before we had this meeting i i asked you know what could the conclusions be is it possible to talk about you know taking this conversation further if it becomes clear that that's what's required and i think as your moderator i would say that there needs to be a convening that happens that brings together the universities and others in the skills agenda with some of the industry agenda who take the draft digital chips out and say this hugely ambitious thing was going to require us all to work differently in the future what's our space for collaborating how do we things do things differently so that we can play our role and if we can get a consensus and clear statement on that and go to the policy makers then the investment will be there if we can show that we can make it happen so i'm sure that the uh eurotech universities network will be interested in convening this conversation further i want to say a warm thank you all for participating and see you again at the next deep dive thank you and goodbye you

Channel: EuroTech Universities Alliance

Views: 15,397

Keywords: chips4eu, chips, semiconductors, European Chips Act, chip manufacturing, chip design, policy, Europe, EU, strategy, autonomy, vision, policy dialogue, European Commission, European Parliament, DTU, École Polytechnique, TUM

Id: rWwaG_99bvo

Length: 92min 26sec (5546 seconds)

Published: Thu May 05 2022