Smart Machines and Systems at the Service of Mankind: Jaan Raik - “Why Estonia Cannot Remain a Technology Player Without Its Own Chip Industry”

Jaan Raik is a Tenured Full Professor at the Department of Computer Systems and the Head of the Center for Dependable Computing Systems at the Tallinn University of Technology (Taltech), Estonia. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering from Taltech in 1997 and in 2001, respectively. His research interests cover a wide area in electrical engineering and computer science domains including reliability of AI chips, test, functional verification, fault-tolerance and security of electronic systems as well as emerging computer architectures.

The topic covered during this conference was “Why Estonia Cannot Remain a Technology Player Without Its Own Chip Industry”.

Prof Raik launched his presentation with the explanation of what a chip is. Simply put, it is an integrated circuit placed on a semiconductor dye. The first chip was already created in 1959 and nowadays they are in every technological product or gadget we can imagine. He also raised the question of why Estonia should build its own chip industry, especially when it is so expensive to build a foundry. Or what should Estonia do to become a player in high tech.

To reach the answers to these points, the speaker introduced the development process of a modern chip. He clarified that Estonia has several companies who have mastered frontend design; necessary equipment for backend design is, however, still largely unreachable. Due to globalisation, most of the chips are produced in Asia, the speaker stated. In fact, more than 50% of the world’s chips are produced at TSMC, in Taiwan. It should be known, however, that most of the chip companies are fabless. That includes NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm and Apple, Prof Raik said. The only remaining exceptions with cutting edge foundries are Samsung and Intel. However, after several hardware security crises and chip supply crises during COVID, the push has been towards deglobalisation. EU’s chip act has the concept of creating a TSMC fab in Dresden, yet this alone would not solve the problem. The true challenge here is the skilled workforce - Europe would need 8000 to 50000 chip engineers. On the Estonian scale this would mean about 150 new chip engineers for the country.

The speaker stated that Estonia should push forward with building our own chip industry, focussing on the fabless sector. It is unavoidable, and actually, we are in a rather good situation, since there are many technology companies that are already starting to implement their own Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), and some good analog-based chip companies like ChipHW and Analoogdisaini AS. It sounds pretty good, Raik stated, yet

there are several obstacles for many Estonian companies. Namely not owning IPs and not producing chips, no access to EDA, no funds, no knowledge of the mask production technologies. How could these hurdles be overcome? Estonia could play a part in many links of the semiconductor value chain, which is extensive We could - and already are - contributing to developing IPs, EDA tools. Also, in the backend development, PCB design, or end-product creation. Estonian companies are also able to enter the field of OSAT.

Due to Estonia’s small size, we could never have chip fabs or integrated manufacturers. And there is no need for this. Yet we should support the transition from design houses (doing subcontracting) into fabless chip companies (with their own IP). Some good news is that a week ago a proposal was submitted to Brussels to create a Chip Competence Centre (CCC) in Estonia. The centre is called KIIP (‘Chip’ in Estonian) and will, among other things, offer consultations and services to Estonian chip startups and companies as well as other partner CCCs within the European Network.

To close the topic, the speaker brought out that Estonia has been quite successful in chip research since the 1990s. TalTech does around 1-2 chip development projects and tape-outs annually - over the last 8 years they have done 8 ASIC projects. There are also two projects, TAICHIP and TIRAMISU, going on right now, which are led by TalTech, have a budget of 6 MEUR and include collaboration with several leading chip companies and universities. You can find the full discussion on our Youtube channel. More information at conference homepage.