Semiconductor Fabs’ Role in Our World
Chips have become so important in the world of today that several countries strive to become self-sufficient
Most of you reading these lines will be doing so with your cell phone. Some of you, comfortably in front of a computer screen. A few of you may be using a smart TV, and maybe one or two of you even an exceptionally advanced refrigerator. It doesn’t matter what device you’re using, but what does matter are the chips inside, and they’ve all been through a fab before.
Semiconductor fabs are the titans of modern industry, a thousand times more complex that the factories that came before during the industrial revolution.
Fabs, or manufacturing plants, are the titans of modern industry, a thousand times more complex than the factories that stood on that pedestal during the industrial revolution, back when coal was king. From there is where the chips that drive our everyday devices come from, from the cash register at the store where we buy our bread in the morning, to the satellites that orbit the planet. And in our modern world, that is slowly closing on to a point where big technological leaps will be an almost regular occurrence, they will play an even more important role.
However, fabs are just a part of the delicate and intricate web that makes up the semiconductor value chain. Even so, they are one of its fundamental pillars, and without them it wouldn’t be possible to transform the silicon that we can find in the sand on any beach into the brains of today’s technology. Public entities and private companies put money into building these foundries, such as Samsung and Intel, two of the leading players in the sector, with fabs the size of a whole neighborhood scattered around the world.
In this same chain we can find the manufacturers of the equipment used in these plants, as well as the fabless, the companies that design the blueprints for new chip models that are sent to be manufactured in external foundries. NVIDIA is one of the most famous fabless, especially within the world of video games for the role they play in pushing the quality of the graphics computers can reproduce, or the famous and ever-present Apple.
The semiconductor ecosystem has a severe Achilles’ heel, and it’s that the production of chips is spread over very few places.
But this ecosystem has a very big Achilles’ heel, and it’s not just that chips are extremely sensitive, it’s that their production is spread over very few places. Taiwan alone carried the weight of 64% of the global semiconductor production on its shoulders in 2024, and it has been on the lead since 1974, with TSMC at the helm. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited is the founder of today’s dedicated semiconductor foundry business model, satisfying the needs of hundreds of companies around the world that trusts on them for the chips in their products, from smartphones to autonomous cars.
But not everything is centered in Taiwan, and there are other countries that dominate other areas of the semiconductor chain. For example, the United States leads the way in chip design, largely thanks to the giant that is Intel, and South Korea dominates semiconductor memory manufacturing with companies such as Samsung.
Since the strongest links in the chain are concentrated in a handful of countries, this makes it vulnerable to certain threats. This is just what happened back in 2020 during the global Covid-19 pandemic, which opened the floodgates to a three-year global chip shortage that affected several industries, reducing production and causing long waiting lists and an increase in prices. However, not all these dangers are of pandemic proportions, as during this same period a terrible winter storm blanketed Texas and forced semiconductor fabs to close, and one suffered a fire in Japan, contributing to the shortage. This weakness is not just a threat to consumers and manufacturers, as several factories in different sectors had to close, costing hundreds of people their jobs.
The pandemic was a wake-up call, and the importance of semiconductors has become so clear that they‘ve managed to creep into politics. The United States and the European Union have developed the Chips Acts, initiatives to improve their position within the semiconductor ecosystem and become self-sufficient. The European Chips Act has a very clear objective, to improve Europe’s strength and competitiveness in the development of semiconductor technologies and their applications, and to use them as a bridge to achieve the green and digital transitions. The Union seeks to climb to a position of technological leadership, and since launching the initiative at full power on September 21, 2023, it’s started to pave this road.
The European Chips Act aims to improve Europe’s strength and competitiveness in the development of semiconductor technologies, and use them as a bridge to reach the green and digital transitions
But the Chips Act is not born only out of the desire for innovation, since before launching it, the Union carried out the Chips Survey, which reached the conclusion that the demands of the industry will double by 2030. For this very reason, the initiative has a funding of 43 million euros from both public and private sources, such as Intel. This funding is being used to build new fabs in the European territories, like the one currently being set up in Dresden, Germany, with the support of TSMC itself.
At Wooptix we see in the Chips Act the opportunity to not only improve the European market’s position, but also to better the quality of life and develop new technologies across the globe. It also holds the promise of new opportunities for several of the regions within the European Union, such as our Canary Islands. For the archipelago, it’s the opportunity to boost its technological industry and demonstrate the capabilities of the talent it has nurtured.
As we saw with the pandemic, semiconductors live in an ecosystem that is as powerful as it is fragile, and it’s imperative to take action to cover what is exposed to the rocks waiting around the corner. The self-sufficiency of the countries that are part of the value chain is a benefit not only for the global market, but also for research, more resilient to these unforeseen events and capable of opening new lines of study. It will also strengthen cooperation and speed up the supply of semiconductors to the companies that manufacture the devices we use on a daily basis, so that fires like the one in Japan cannot stop our work together.
The Chips Act is just the opportunity to turn all these possibilities into reality, and to leave the ‘made in Europe’ mark within the technology industry. And most importantly, to give a future to the flourishing talent of our diverse regions through the jobs that these ever-developing sectors offer in the present, and will offer in the future.
Daniel Cuartero
About Wooptix
Wooptix is a leader in semiconductor metrology through the use of wavefront phase imaging, a technique derived from research in adaptive optics for astronomy. With a multidisciplinary team, Wooptix seeks to revolutionize semiconductor metrology with the highest lateral resolution and fastest measurement technique for in-line factory measurements.
The company has developed Phemet®, a silicon wafer measurement tool that serves as the precursor to its fully automated manufacturing tool expected by 2025. Wooptix has already implemented Phemet® in various customer facilities worldwide. Wooptix is headquartered in Tenerife, Madrid (Spain), and San Francisco (USA).