Czechia wants to build on its strong tradition in microelectronics, integrated circuit design and precision instrument manufacturing in the semiconductor sector. According to Professor Jiří Jakovenko, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague, however, the decisive factor will be whether the country can educate enough specialists, connect universities with industry and give young companies access to technologies that are normally far beyond their financial reach in the chip industry.
How do the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at CTU and the Czech Semiconductor Centre, in whose activities you are involved, fit into efforts to strengthen the role of semiconductors in Czech industry?
When preparations for the National Semiconductor Strategy began, experts from universities were invited to contribute as well. We worked with companies and the ministry on what the Czech semiconductor industry should look like and where Czechia has the best chance of succeeding. At the same time, the European Chips Act became part of the process; under it, each Member State is to establish a semiconductor competence centre. The Czech Semiconductor Centre emerged from this process and now operates as a platform intended to connect universities, companies, start-ups and European infrastructure.
For us, this is a natural continuation of what has long been happening at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at CTU. We have a long history of working with companies involved in chip and electronics design, including STMicroelectronics, Renesas, onsemi and ASICentrum. It is precisely this connection between universities and industry that is essential in semiconductors; without it, the entire ecosystem could not function.
The National Semiconductor Strategy envisages rapid growth in the sector. Do you think this is realistic?
It is very ambitious. One of its goals is to increase the number of specialists working in the Czech semiconductor industry to around 9,000 by 2029. That is genuinely bold, because universities have a key role to play and educating new talent takes time.
If we start educating new specialists today, the impact on the labour market will only be seen in three to five years. Students have to complete their bachelor’s and master’s degrees before they become engineers ready to join companies. We have been successful in increasing young people’s interest in microelectronics, electronics and semiconductors. In the Electronics and Communications programme, the number of applicants has risen significantly in recent years, and this year we launched a new degree programme, Electronics and Integrated Systems. Even that, however, will not bring an immediate change to the market.
This is why retraining and micro-credentials are also being discussed. How are they supposed to work?
Micro-credentials are one way of helping companies more quickly. They are not a substitute for university education, but short, intensive courses for people in industry, focused very precisely on a particular topic. They are short, intensive and quality-assured lifelong-learning courses for people who already have a technical background (e.g. IT specialists, mechanical engineers or physicists) but need to rapidly add semiconductor-specific skills. At the Czech Semiconductor Centre, we therefore first approached companies to find out what knowledge they were missing. Based on these findings, we are preparing specialised courses.
In terms of content, these are often parts of subjects taken by our students in their bachelor’s or master’s studies. At the end, participants receive a certificate. The long-term European objective is for micro-credentials to be standardised and recognised across Europe. For companies, this is attractive because they can upskill people they already employ and do not have to rely solely on new graduates.
The semiconductor industry is also about innovation. Have Czech universities learned how to support start-ups?
Frankly, universities are not particularly strong at this yet. Only a handful of semiconductor-focused start-ups are established here, and that is a shame. At the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, we are trying to change this. We have a Vice-Dean for Commercialisation on the faculty leadership team, whose role includes helping to ensure that research results do not end up only as academic papers, but make their way into practice, products or start-ups.
In semiconductors, however, this is considerably more difficult than in software. Chip design relies on professional tools such as Cadence or Synopsys, and licences can cost millions or tens of millions of Czech crowns. For a young company, that can be prohibitive before it even begins real development.
Another barrier is time. It can take two or three years to go from chip design to a product that can be brought to market. And even if a company is fabless, meaning it has no manufacturing of its own, it still needs access to production capacity. If you approach a chip manufacturer asking for hundreds of millions of chips, they will talk to you. If you need small volumes for a new product, it is much more difficult. This is precisely where semiconductor competence centres, the European Design Platform and pilot lines are intended to help, opening access for start-ups to infrastructure they could not otherwise afford. The Czech Semiconductor Centre will help these early-stage companies gain access to the European chip platform, which will provide access to licences for advanced EDA tools and cloud-based design systems at a fraction of the commercial price.
Where does Czechia have the strongest position in the European semiconductor value chain?
Czechia has a fairly broad portfolio. We have a strong position in power semiconductors, where onsemi plays an important role as one of the world’s largest manufacturers of power semiconductors. In Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, both silicon wafers and silicon-carbide-based chips are manufactured, and chips are also designed there. onsemi’s planned multi-billion-dollar expansion makes Czechia one of the centres of Europe’s transition to green energy and electromobility.
The second area is integrated circuit design. Design centres in Prague, Brno and other cities design chips and use manufacturing capacity abroad, for example elsewhere in Europe or in Taiwan.
The third area is the supply chain. Chip manufacturing requires exceptionally precise equipment for diagnostics and measurement, chemicals, mechanical engineering and other specialised technologies. Czechia has a strong position, for example, in electron microscopy, with companies such as Thermo Fisher Scientific and Tescan operating here.
Another major opportunity is the proximity of Dresden, where the European ESMC fab involving TSMC, Bosch, Infineon and NXP is being built. For Czech companies, joining this supply chain could be a very logical step. If successful, semiconductors could become one of the key industries on which Czechia builds its future.
Taiwan plays a major role in Czech plans. What exactly are you collaborating on?
At the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at CTU, we are developing several activities. One is a joint research centre with Taiwan’s TSRI, the Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute. It is a major institution that connects universities, companies and other organisations in the semiconductor field in Taiwan. This year, seven joint research projects received support, with Czech-Taiwanese teams working, for example, on the development of new semiconductor devices, environmental sensors, silicon photonics chips and topics related to cybersecurity.
The second important initiative is ACDRC, the Advanced Chip Design and Research Center, involving CTU, Brno University of Technology and Masaryk University. The centre’s core mission is research with Taiwanese industry partners, but it also includes activities focused on educating new talent, organising summer schools and intensive courses for students and people from industry, taught by experts from Taiwan. This June, for example, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering hosted courses on silicon photonics and advanced analogue chip design.
This cooperation is very valuable to us because Taiwan is a global leader in chips, and working together enables us to transfer know-how that would otherwise be much more difficult to obtain. At the same time, this is not a one-way relationship. The Czech side has its own strong capabilities in design, applications, research and industrial infrastructure. If these strengths can be combined, it could create a very interesting long-term opportunity.
Source: ITBiz.cz
Photos: FEE CTU
