David Atienza presented "SwissChips: IC Design for All in Switzerland" at DATE 2025
We were at DATE 2025 and participated in the Panel: Improving Chip Design Enablement for Universities in Europe, which brought together stakeholders of different initiatives from Europe and the USA working towards these goals. The panel explored the critical challenges, opportunities, and potential strategies facing chip design enablement in European academic institutions. David Atienza discussed SwissChips and support for IC design in Switzerland.
Panel Session:
Improving Chip Design Enablement for Universities in Europe
Panel Overview:
The semiconductor industry is central to the European economy, particularly in the industrial and automotive sectors. Semiconductor fabrication and chip design are the two largest segments of the microelectronics value chain. While Europe is strengthening semiconductor fabrication and technology with considerable investments, e.g., in new fabs, chip design capabilities fall far short of the required capacities. The EU MicroElectronics Training, Industry and Skills (METIS) Report 2023 has shown that chip designers are the job profiles identified as the most difficult to find in the European microelectronics industry. European universities face many challenges hindering their ability to produce skilled graduates and contribute to the semiconductor ecosystem. While student interest in, e.g., AI is booming, we observe a decreasing interest in microelectronics. The main reasons for this are the high entry barriers for students, reinforced by the lack of chip design enablement in academia. Hence, there are ongoing initiatives in different European countries, on the EU level, and worldwide to strengthen chip design education and research. This focus session will bring together stakeholders of these initiatives from Europe and the USA to explore the critical challenges, opportunities, and potential strategies facing chip design enablement in European academic institutions. The session will be held in the panel format with active audience participation to guarantee inclusiveness and foster a broad view of the topic.
David Atienza discussed the goals of SwissChips and our support for all Swiss educational institutions with IC design, as well as other engagement and recruiting efforts including our Tiny Tapeout workshops that will focus on IC design for students and general public, and other efforts to democratize IC design education including the development of an open-source-based IC design course. He also encouraged the community to sign the letter to support open source chips for Europe: external page https://open-source-chips.eu/
Download Panel Slides (PDF, 2.1 MB) (David Atienza)
external page DATE 2025 program
