It's not just Infineon - it's called the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC) and is a joint venture by TSMC, Bosch, Infineon, and NXP, with TSMC being the majority (70%) shareholder.
I've met one of the engineers designing the piping for that plant. Hardest project to date for him and mainly because TSMC was setting the pace.
1718627440 52 minutes ago [-]
These are different plants, that are situated in the same quarter.
Isn't that TSMC joint venture another plant that will open next year?
petcat 3 hours ago [-]
My understanding is that these are pretty low-tech chips only for industrial uses?
blitzar 2 hours ago [-]
Also suitable for keeping an economy functioning and weaponry in war.
You might not be able to fabricate billion terraflop GPUs but at least the basics of survival will be able to be locally produced without scavenging washing machines for parts.
joe_mamba 5 minutes ago [-]
>Also suitable for keeping an economy functioning
The (western) economy runs on sub 7nm phone, laptop and datacenter chips on which the white collar workforce produces value. Those are the ones that are also the most profitable since they have the highest margins. Europe doesn't have that.
seabird 1 hours ago [-]
“Only for industrial uses” is kind of a crazy thing to say when you say it out loud, don’t you think? You might as well say “only for having real-world impact”.
joe_mamba 3 minutes ago [-]
And 3nm CPUs, GPUs, phone SoCs don't have "real world impact"?
One could say they have an even bigger real world impact.
mqus 2 hours ago [-]
they may low-density, but low-tech?
alephnerd 3 hours ago [-]
> these are pretty low-tech chips only for industrial uses
I don't like this framing.
These aren't logic ICs but that doesn't mean they are useless or "easy".
Heck, the only countries with Gallium Nitride fabrication capabilities and knowhow are the US, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and India.
In fact, compound semiconductors and power electronics is one segment where Europe's China dependency is extremely high, as they have significant uses from automotive to PLCs to weapons systems, and China has already begun embargoing the EU's access to rare earth elements [0] and has begun enforcing sanctions against the EU's aerospace and UAV industry [1].
These are dual use technologies and a major reason why both the US and China heavily invested in compound semiconductor capacity in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Edit: can't reply
> In 2024 Belgium closed its only semi fab, which had recently pivoted to GaN
THEMA Foundries is working in photonics, not GaNs [2]. The GaN initiative (BelGaN) failed and the only two buyers interested in buying out the property for GaN fabrication were a Chinese and Indian player [2].
In 2024 Belgium closed its only semi fab, which had recently pivoted to GaN.
imtringued 3 hours ago [-]
Germany doesn't design high end SoCs or x86 processors so why would they build a fab for them?
petra 2 hours ago [-]
Designing a secure platform is possible within the EU[1].
[1]They need to use US EDA tools, And manufacture masks but maybe there are tricks they won't need to trust them - like inspecting critical parts of the masks.
IshKebab 25 minutes ago [-]
It's not just high end CPUs that use the latest processes. Power, Performance and Area is important to all chips, including microcontrollers, FPGA, etc.
alephnerd 2 hours ago [-]
Bad take.
Design capacity doesn't imply fabrication capacity, as can be seen with Israel and India's comparative dominance in the chip design industry.
Design capacity (basically programming and logic design) is orthogonal to front-end fabrication (basically material science and chemical engineering) which is orthogonal to back-end/OSAT (basically materials science and metrology).
Only the US and Taiwan have domestic E2E capacity in all 3.
usrnm 3 hours ago [-]
> The plant will produce chips for intelligent power management
> The company ... sought to capitalise on the massive AI investment boom
These chips are probably very useful and important, but I don't see what they have to do with AI. Does everything need to have the word AI these days?
_fizz_buzz_ 3 hours ago [-]
Infineon is betting big on the 800V dc power distribution that seems to become the new standard for AI data centers which is directly relevant for the chips that are made in this fab.
1718627440 49 minutes ago [-]
I think this fab was already in construction before the AI hype, this is just marketing.
alephnerd 3 hours ago [-]
> don't see what they have to do with AI
Not directly. This fab is meant to primarily fabricate compound semiconductors which is Infineon's niche and is a major bottleneck for European industry today.
> Does everything need to have the word AI these days
Because Infineon's press release [0] for their compound semiconductor fab called out "AI".
Additonally, the "semiconductor" and "hardware" segment has now been rebranded has "AI" in a number of funds. By calling out something that's even tenuously tied to "AI", it allows funds that are contractually tied to investing in "AI" to purchase Infineon stock.
there was a buzzword bingo and their application reached Bingo! first.
alephnerd 3 hours ago [-]
As I mentioned about this before [0], this is a compound semiconductor fab - a very critical bottleneck for European industry and a much more worrisome NatSec issue than sub-14nm logical chip fabrication or arguably even AI.
This is not directly related to AI or logical compute, so kvetching about GPUs, SoCs, TSMC, AI, and other buzzwords is dumb.
I would also like to see local PCB manufacturers - pcbway etc like. Modern production facilities might even be locally competitive given the amount of automation that can be had.
plextoria 2 hours ago [-]
Does AISLER[1] do the same thing as pcbway? They seem to be based in Germany/EU
They should, but sadly it's extremely difficult for PCB board manufacturing to return to Europe.
EU has FTAs with Japan and SK, and others that dominate the segment like Taiwan, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and India have already unlocked public-private subsidized for the sector.
Additionally, the big players in the industry like ZDT, Unimicron, Nippon Mekatron, Foxconn, Compeq, TTM, and Flex have much stronger financial and political linkages in Asia or the Americas.
This fab itself is important, but was extremely difficult to stand-up and was largely a result of the supply chain issues that the automotive industry faced during zero covid, so it basically took 6 years to execute on this project. That lag-time is the biggest issue unless individual European states decide to take industrial policy their own hands, which becomes expensive very quickly.
Concentrating on building a niche in compound semiconductors as well as 2.5/3D packaging would probably be the best bet for the EU today, but I expect to see French-German industrial rivalry to undermine coordination.
TheChaplain 2 hours ago [-]
Funny that the article didn't mention it.
Infineon got €1bn of tax payer money to open the plant (~$1.1bn).
advisedwang 1 hours ago [-]
The article says:
> The facility was backed by the EU's Chips Act with one billion euros in subsidies
1718627440 46 minutes ago [-]
There are worse ways to spend tax payers money.
Squarex 14 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, most europeans are not aware how much do we spend on agriculture, pensions and healthcare.
48484949 24 minutes ago [-]
Let's see the state of this project in 5 years. Experience tends to show European projects dragging forever and then suddenly closing whilst funds mysteriously move into semi public companies with boards full to the brim with retired political figures
logicchains 20 minutes ago [-]
Still better odds of success than if that money was used to pay welfare for unskilled migrants instead.
Rendered at 17:16:09 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I've met one of the engineers designing the piping for that plant. Hardest project to date for him and mainly because TSMC was setting the pace.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1191197175 vs. https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/583767292
You might not be able to fabricate billion terraflop GPUs but at least the basics of survival will be able to be locally produced without scavenging washing machines for parts.
The (western) economy runs on sub 7nm phone, laptop and datacenter chips on which the white collar workforce produces value. Those are the ones that are also the most profitable since they have the highest margins. Europe doesn't have that.
One could say they have an even bigger real world impact.
I don't like this framing.
These aren't logic ICs but that doesn't mean they are useless or "easy".
Heck, the only countries with Gallium Nitride fabrication capabilities and knowhow are the US, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and India.
In fact, compound semiconductors and power electronics is one segment where Europe's China dependency is extremely high, as they have significant uses from automotive to PLCs to weapons systems, and China has already begun embargoing the EU's access to rare earth elements [0] and has begun enforcing sanctions against the EU's aerospace and UAV industry [1].
These are dual use technologies and a major reason why both the US and China heavily invested in compound semiconductor capacity in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Edit: can't reply
> In 2024 Belgium closed its only semi fab, which had recently pivoted to GaN
THEMA Foundries is working in photonics, not GaNs [2]. The GaN initiative (BelGaN) failed and the only two buyers interested in buying out the property for GaN fabrication were a Chinese and Indian player [2].
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-firms-brace-more-shut...
[1] - https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3351292/...
[2] - https://www.semiconductor-today.com/news_items/2025/apr/belg...
[1]They need to use US EDA tools, And manufacture masks but maybe there are tricks they won't need to trust them - like inspecting critical parts of the masks.
Design capacity doesn't imply fabrication capacity, as can be seen with Israel and India's comparative dominance in the chip design industry.
Design capacity (basically programming and logic design) is orthogonal to front-end fabrication (basically material science and chemical engineering) which is orthogonal to back-end/OSAT (basically materials science and metrology).
Only the US and Taiwan have domestic E2E capacity in all 3.
> The company ... sought to capitalise on the massive AI investment boom
These chips are probably very useful and important, but I don't see what they have to do with AI. Does everything need to have the word AI these days?
Not directly. This fab is meant to primarily fabricate compound semiconductors which is Infineon's niche and is a major bottleneck for European industry today.
> Does everything need to have the word AI these days
Because Infineon's press release [0] for their compound semiconductor fab called out "AI".
Additonally, the "semiconductor" and "hardware" segment has now been rebranded has "AI" in a number of funds. By calling out something that's even tenuously tied to "AI", it allows funds that are contractually tied to investing in "AI" to purchase Infineon stock.
Investor relations is important as well.
[0] - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/infineon-opens-the-...
This is not directly related to AI or logical compute, so kvetching about GPUs, SoCs, TSMC, AI, and other buzzwords is dumb.
[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48557914
[1] https://aisler.net/en
EU has FTAs with Japan and SK, and others that dominate the segment like Taiwan, China, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and India have already unlocked public-private subsidized for the sector.
Additionally, the big players in the industry like ZDT, Unimicron, Nippon Mekatron, Foxconn, Compeq, TTM, and Flex have much stronger financial and political linkages in Asia or the Americas.
This fab itself is important, but was extremely difficult to stand-up and was largely a result of the supply chain issues that the automotive industry faced during zero covid, so it basically took 6 years to execute on this project. That lag-time is the biggest issue unless individual European states decide to take industrial policy their own hands, which becomes expensive very quickly.
Concentrating on building a niche in compound semiconductors as well as 2.5/3D packaging would probably be the best bet for the EU today, but I expect to see French-German industrial rivalry to undermine coordination.
Infineon got €1bn of tax payer money to open the plant (~$1.1bn).
> The facility was backed by the EU's Chips Act with one billion euros in subsidies