NXP says R&D expansion still depends on level of public funding

News | September 19, 2023

By Peter Clarke

Analog Power Management RISC-V quantum RF transmission semiconductor Optoelectronics MPUs/MCUs

NXP Semiconductors NV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) has said it is planning to increase its European R&D but the final investment decision is still dependent on how much money national ministries agree to provide.

NXP said it expects grants to be provided by the national authorities in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Romania under the second Important Project of Common European Interest on Microelectronics and Communication Technologies (IPCEI ME/CT). The bureaucracy around this European support mechanism has been very slow with calls for urgency going back to January 2022 and before (see ESIA tells European Commission to hurry up with IPCEI financial support).

A spokesperson said: “The final investment decision depends on the confirmation of the level of public funding. As the confirmation is currently ongoing, we are not able to provide any further details on the planned investments. We expect feedback from the respective ministries in the course of Q4.”

“NXP’s planned investments in our Austrian, German, Dutch, and Romanian operations signal our strong commitment to the EU’s goal of enabling both digital and green transition,” said, Kurt Sievers, CEO of NXP, in a statement. He added: “Our activities through IPCEI ME/CT complement NXP’s planned joint venture participation in TSMC’s first European foundry. It also underscores our commitment to strengthening innovation and supply chain resilience in Europe.”

NXP is active participant in three of the four IPCEI ME/CT workstreams: “Sense”, “Think”, and “Communicate”, reflecting NXP’s broad range set of chip activities.

Four countries and a JV

NXP’s planned investments in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Romania follow the announcement that the company is going to form a joint venture, European Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (ESMC), with TSMC, Bosch, and Infineon (see €10bn EMSC joint venture FINFET fab for Europe). The ESMC joint venture, planned to be built in Dresden, Germany, is expected to have a monthly production capacity of 40,000 wafers on TSMC’s 28/22 nanometer planar CMOS and 16/12 nanometer FinFET process technologies, creating about 2,000 direct high-tech professional jobs.

While the joint venture is set to ramp semiconductor production in Europe the IPCEI grant mechanism is focused on R&D capability. NXP has locations across four countries inside the European Union that could benefit if a positive decision is taken.

NXP has a centre for cryptography and security in Austria where it employs 800 people.

R&D in Germany working on automotive, industrial IoT, mobile and wearables. Primary R&D competencies in Hamburg, Munich, and Dresden include cybersecurity, automotive processing, and RF. A collaborative quantum computing initiative was established in 2023 in Hamburg. IPCEI will help to further strengthen and expand these core competencies, NXP said.

In the Netherlands NXP has R&D groups in Eindhoven, Nijmegen, and Delft covering such areas as security, manufacturing, test, wireless and sensors.

NXP Bucharest has 1,000 people with a focus on software development for automotive, microcontrollers and connectivity products as well as IT service management and customer supply operations.