Nvidia's success is no coincidence. Nowadays, chips are needed everywhere—in smartwatches, cars, cards squeezed into wallets, and the recently booming applications of artificial intelligence. Moreover, chip design depends on the application, so a chip for a smartwatch cannot be effectively used in a surveillance camera.

Chip technology has not significantly changed over the decades—photochemical processes are still used. However, dimensions and parameters have changed significantly. Professor Raik recalls that when he started the chip lab at the technical university in the 1990s, the dimensions of the first chip created there were around one micron. Today, the unit of measurement is a nanometer, a thousand times smaller. "If we think about the chip's area, we can now place a million times more things on the same surface compared to the early days," says Raik.

Last year, Europe announced a plan to spend 43 billion euros on developing chip technology. The European Chips Act aims to increase the market share to 20%. There are reasons for this. "Recent supply difficulties for cars or medical devices were due to a shortage of chips. In some cases, factories had to be completely shut down," explains the European Commission on its website. The plan also includes establishing a chip factory in Europe to reduce dependency on other regions.

The USA introduced its own Chips Act a year earlier. Their plan includes spending up to 280 billion dollars on chip production and development, including 39 billion dollars for building factories, a 25% tax credit for factory equipment, and 13 billion dollars for research and training.

Estonia's Great Opportunity
Currently, over 60% of chips are produced in Taiwan, which is home to the world's most advanced chip factories. However, a chip manufacturer is usually considered to be a company that designs chips. Typically, chip manufacturers do not have their own factories.

"It is important to ensure that chip factories have something to produce," says Raik. A major problem in Europe is the lack of chip engineers. Europe hopes to increase the number of such engineers eightfold, by 50,000 people.

According to Raik, this means about a hundred chip engineers in Estonia. Training these people does not happen quickly. From the start of design to the arrival of actual chips takes about a year. "If you know what you're doing, training takes about a year, but starting from scratch, it takes three to four years to achieve the first success, assuming you have a very good mentor," says Raik.

Chip production would provide a great opportunity for Estonia. The Center for Reliable Computing Systems, led by Raik, has produced eight different chips over the past eight years. According to Raik, the necessary infrastructure for chip production is essentially in place. Currently, this infrastructure is used for academic purposes. However, all the programs, tools, and technologies are the same as those used in the commercial world. "The question is how to spread this capability beyond TalTech into the business sector," says Raik.

So far, interest has been weak. Estonians do work in chip design, but mainly as subcontractors, providing services rather than developing separate intellectual property. Therefore, it's no wonder Estonia is continually declining in competitiveness rankings. We also have chip designers, but we lack companies capable of developing chips suitable for factory production.

We urgently need such capabilities for quantum computing, materials science, astronomy, healthcare, and more immediate needs like vehicles. One tiny chip makes all these other things possible.

This article is a translation of the original article published on 15th July on TalTech's technology news portal, Trialoog.