The region still has hidden strengths in the equipment used in chipmaking but faces a shortage of skilled labour A worker assembles an illumination module at ASML in the Netherlands. ASML is a key group in the European semiconductor industry © FT Montage/Ton Toemen/ASML/Getty Images The global microchip race: Europe’s bid to catch up on twitter (opens in a new window) The global microchip race: Europe’s bid to catch up on facebook (opens in a new window) The global microchip race: Europe’s bid to catch up on linkedin (opens in a new window) Save current progress 0% Lauly Li in London DECEMBER 13 2022 136 Print this page Receive free Semiconductors updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Semiconductors news every morning.
On the edge of a tranquil forest an hour’s drive from Stuttgart, where hiking trails snake through the trees and across gently rolling hills, sits one of Europe’s secret weapons in the global race to develop the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Oberkochen, a small town of just 8,000 people in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg, is headquarters to Carl Zeiss SMT, the only manufacturer of the mirrors and lenses used in the world’s most advanced chipmaking equipment. Its ultra-precise mirrors and lenses are so accurate that they are capable of a precision 200 times greater than the James Webb Space Telescope. Zeiss has “a unique competence”, says Peter Wennink, chief executive of ASML, the Netherlands-based company that holds a global monopoly on manufacture of the extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines required to make cutting edge chips — and is one of its most important customers. Without Zeiss optics, he says ASML could not make its EUV machines, which use ultraviolet light to scan chip designs on to silicon wafers at a tiny scale.
And without ASML machines, it would be impossible to make the most advanced chips needed for future technologies such as artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and quantum computing. Advanced chipmaking equipment is one of Europe’s hidden strengths as countries around the world try to capture a share of an industry which is at the centre of the modern economy and which is becoming increasingly laced with geopolitical risk.
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