The focus on 22-28nm chips is by no means illogical. The story of Jtemmink it’s right. The reliability requirements for automotive chips are much higher, just as automotive manufacturers have set themselves much stricter EMC requirements than those required by the EC. Experience has also shown that this is not an unnecessary luxury. Sissori it also has a good argument why for many chips the smallest process is not the cheapest.
Personally, I would have liked to see the Netherlands play a bigger role in boosting chip development in Europe. Unfortunately, the average politician in Holland has little insight into technological development. For years we played a significant role in the development and finally gave almost everything to the Far East because people wanted to work for less money for our luxury goods. Initially only production, but development soon followed.
When I had to have RF-ID chip samples 14 years ago, I had to go through various levels of management at NXP in the Netherlands, as I had arranged for them at lunchtime in Singapore and received them right away. If you want to be decisive in an innovative way, you actually have to be where it happens and the reality is that unfortunately it’s not here in the Netherlands anymore. Also, high quality technology in NL (Europe?) is usually underpaid (with exceptions) and this also results in the low growth of electrical engineering students at HBO and universities. When I went to university, a business student told me, I will not study electrical engineering if I can make much more money with a much simpler study. This has always stayed with me.
Politicians should do much more to bring chip manufacturing and development to the Netherlands. We build the best lithography equipment for it (ASML) ourselves, so we have room for negotiation and have a lot to offer. So it was good to see on TV yesterday that ASML is now cultivating interest in technology development in schools. But it’s time for politicians to wake up.
