Flanders Chips Competence Center

ongoing

The Flanders Chips Competence Centre (FC3), proposed under the European Chips Act, seeks to enhance the growth of Europe’s semiconductor sector and to ensure a robust supply chain. It fits within the Chips for Europe Initiative, complementing the Pilot Lines, the Design Platform and the Chips Fund. The FC3 will be the first point of contact in Flanders to facilitate access to these infrastructures, and to technical expertise and experiments in the fields of chip development and system integration. It also aims to be instrumental in alleviating the talent shortage in the broad semiconductor ecosystem. To reach its goals, the FC3 will deploy five major activities: (1) providing skill development, mainly by organizing courses, (2) offering chip development and system integration services, both for mature technologies, as well as for upcoming technologies, (3) creating pathfinding demonstrators, as a means to showcase the potential of chip technology, (4) acting as a central contact point, functioning as a proactive front office towards all the stakeholders and potential clients of the center, and (5) outreach and dissemination, to have a bidirectional interaction between the center and the public. The focus area of the FC3 is the broad domain of analog, mixed-signal and digital chip design and development, photonic components, chips and technology, and electronic and photonic system integration. The FC3 consortium’s expertise in skill development, chip design, and system integration, combined with its strong ties to industry, its world-class infrastructure, its innovative R&D models, its active support for entrepreneurship, and its well-developed relationships with the other stakeholders of the Flemish and the European chips ecosystems, positions it as the ideal consortium to implement the Flanders Chips Competence Center.