Just recently the EU is putting extreme effort on Microelectronics, accelerated by the awakening of AI and our realization of it's importance. How can the EU catch up on Microelectronics fast? Open standards and open source is in our view a must ingredient to enable EU companies into a competitive stage and therefore a solid open source system to draw from is important.

Most of Microelectronic development has been happening in USA and various Asian countries while in the EU except for established, traditional players, not much new (innovations) has happened. With the arrival of AI and more real use cases, the need of a strong, competitive Microelectronic industry has arrived and the European Union has realized it's importance and putting more resources to make sure we are in a competitive and self sustaining position in this key technology. While the field is complex there is a big value add in the design (creation) of chips.

Investment into microelectronics are high with various parts being used in each project, such as CPU's (Central Processing Units) being the brain of any digital Chip. With RISC-V as an open standard of how to structure that CPU and not for profits such as OpenHW Foundation we can leverage a industry proven, high quality platform, allowing European established players but also startups to jump start their time to market by re-using and sharing proven building blocks, saving time and money and allowing much more testing and also potential interaction between companies and research units.

Programs such as Tristan or Isolde, initiated by the Chips JU are a proven way to build the base for a sovereign and independent yet innovative European Union and we will highlight some cases how it is used from big players such as Thales or Bosch but also startups like Axelera AI and a variety of small medium Businesses and what was possible so far, while also critical asking: Is it enough and what could be done more?

In this Talk the OpenHW Foundation a global non profit, Headquartered in Brussels is showing the recent successes especially in Europe, what is ongoing and where we should pay more attention.