The Government will create this Tuesday the foundation to manage the InnoFAB chip center.
The facility, which will involve an investment of 400 million euros with European funds, will be managed by an entity chaired by Research and with Economy as vice-presidency.
BarcelonaThe steps toward launching the first chip design, development, and prototyping center in Catalonia are accelerating. The Generalitat (Catalan government) plans to approve this Tuesday the creation of the public foundation InnoFAB, with the purpose of promoting specialized research and development in technology and pre-production of chips based on advanced semiconductors, which have strategic applications in sectors ranging from electronics to healthcare and energy.
The facility, the result of a collaboration between the central and Catalan governments, will be built within Alba Park, in the municipality of Cerdanyola del Vallès, and will be funded by the European Next Generation EU funds. InnoFAB, in fact, is part of the PERTE (strategic project) chip and the European Chips Act. These are two European initiatives that seek to strengthen European technological autonomy, one of Brussels' priorities.
The project will involve an investment of 400 million euros. Last April, the Catalan government unblocked the initiative with a contribution of 3.5 million euros to bid for the engineering project. Attached to the Department of Research, the foundation's board of trustees will include this regional ministry, along with the departments of Economy, the Presidency, and Business and Labor. Three renowned individuals in the field of research will also join the board, proposed by the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, which has so far led the technical coordination of the project. The presidency of the foundation will be held by the Minister of Research, Núria Montserrat, and the vice-president of the Ministry of Economy, Alícia Romero.
Collaboration between the State and the Generalitat
The center will have a 2,000-square-meter clean room, as these isolated facilities are called, designed to scale chip manufacturing processes in an industrial setting. This center will work in close collaboration with the Alba synchrotron.
The project was born from the collaboration between the head of the central government, Pedro Sánchez, and Pere Aragonès, who was president of the Generalitat at the end of 2023. Subsequently, the current head of the Catalan government, Salvador Illa, continued with the project and has consolidated it.