The label is sweet and the play on words is clear. When in 2000 some microelectronics and semiconductor companies based around the German city of Dresden decided to found an association, they looked at Silicon Valley, the Californian industrial area that champions computing and electronics, and opted to called Silicon Saxony, Silicon Saxony. The technological hub that emerged in this way has grown to bring together 490 companies in the sector. It is the largest microelectronics cluster in Europe and a production, R D and skilled employment laboratory for the continent: one in every three chips manufactured in Europe comes from here.
On the outskirts of the Saxon capital, a relatively short distance from the central palaces and baroque monuments that earn Dresden the nickname Florence on the Elbe, factories of large semiconductor companies such as the German Infineon and Bosch or the American Globalfoundries are located, and The Taiwanese company TSMC is expected to arrive soon. The business network is completed with firms specialized in nanoelectronics, polymer electronics, 5G mobile telephony, tactile internet, sensors and automation, as well as universities and technological research institutes. Startups flourish.
According to calculations by Silicon Saxony, the resulting ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) value chain involves around 2,500 businesses in a triangular area that reaches the cities, also Saxon, of Leipzig and Chemnitz. Altogether, 76,100 people work in this environment. And, as is often the case in Germany when it comes to employment, arms are needed here too.
“We have had years of constant growth, according to our expectations, but now it is accelerating even more; Therefore, we assume that in 2030 around 100,000 people will work in Silicon Saxony in many job profiles,” explains Frank Bösenberg, managing director of the association. There is also another relevant factor for workers, according to Bösenberg. “As there are so many microelectronics firms active in various fields, a professional who settles in Dresden can make a career by changing companies without having to move again; In Germany, this only occurs in Frankfurt for those who want to dedicate themselves to the banking sector.”
We are in the semiconductor factory that Infineon – based in Munich and a German leader in the sector – has in Dresden, next to which it is building a new factory to increase production. The current factory has 40,000 square meters of clean room or clean room, that is, an area with a controlled atmosphere in terms of temperature, pressure, humidity, air flow and suspended particles, among other parameters, to reduce pollution as much as possible. In this highly automated environment, silicon wafers are processed, the king semiconductor material in the microelectronics industry due to its properties and its wide presence and availability: it is the second most abundant chemical element after oxygen, and it is found freely in the sand. of the beaches.
A semiconductor is a substance whose electrical conductivity can be manipulated, and the semiconductor industry relies on adding impurities to silicon to adjust its behavior. “Simply put, the manipulations we introduce to the wafers create obstacles that force the electrons to behave in various ways, and that will allow each microchip to perform the functions for which it is manufactured,” explains engineer and chemist Ludwig Dittmar, who acts as guide four journalists through the Infineon clean room.
We all wear a special suit that covers us entirely, without gaps in the wrists or ankles and with the head and face covered; only a horizontal slot appears for the eyes. We wear clogs for internal use. A light breeze is blowing, as it is necessary for the air to circulate. “Manufacturing must be done in a clean room because any slightest particle of contamination that falls on the wafers would cause interference in the response process of the electrons to our manipulation and would also be a multiplying interference, affecting many levels of information in the microchips.” clarifies Dittmar. Infineon produces very thin wafers with two diameter measurements (200 millimeters and 300 millimeters) for different types of microcircuits, from those intended for the automotive industry to those used in security systems, in energy management or in multimarket applications, among others.
Outside, cranes and excavators are applied to the construction of the new factory, named Smart Power Fab, which costs 5,000 million euros. It is expected to start manufacturing semiconductors in autumn 2026.
The works began on May 2, 2023 and at the starting ceremony the following symbolically held shovels: the chancellor, Olaf Scholz; the president of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer; the mayor of Dresden, Dirk Hilbert; Infineon CEO Jochen Hanebeck; and – attention – the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. The European Union (EU) seeks to expand its own production of semiconductors to depend less on Asian producers.
Thus, the new EU Chip Law will mobilize 43,000 million euros so that in 2030 European production will be 20% of the world production - in 2022 it was 9% - and thus be capable of tackling possible new crises of supplies like the one that occurred after the covid pandemic. “Dresden is a digital beacon in Europe,” Von der Leyen said in his speech that day.
Those at Infineon are not the only works underway in Silicon Saxony, where construction machinery is working at full capacity. Already in June 2021, the German group Bosch inaugurated an impressive 72,000 square meter semiconductor factory in Dresden in which it invested one billion euros. Now, the optical and photonic technologies company Jenoptik, also German, is constructing a new building in Dresden, while the American Globalfoundries is injecting investments into its Saxon plant.
But the big project is the branch that the Taiwanese company TSMC will install, which will be the only factory in Europe for this semiconductor giant, budgeted at 10 billion euros. Half of that amount will come from the German federal government, a subsidy that has generated controversy and discontent in Germany because it is a foreign firm.
“I'm glad that TSMC is coming to Dresden; “The construction of a completely new semiconductor factory will further strengthen Silicon Saxony as the largest microelectronics cluster in Europe, and will contribute to the economic and technological growth of Saxony,” argued Christian Democrat Michael Kretschmer, president of Saxony, in a meeting with correspondents. foreigners in the neo-baroque palace from the beginning of the 20th century where the chancellery of the regional government is based.
Kretschmer also recalled the electronic substrate of Saxony at the time of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), of which it was a part, and defended that “it is a land that has taken advantage of opportunities very consistently since the reunification of Germany in 1990; “That Dresden is the most suitable place for microelectronics shows that investment has been made here in technological research, business, transport and that political decisions have helped.”
In fact, it is no coincidence. Silicon Saxony has its roots in the communist GDR's commitment to promoting microelectronics in this region. The Zentrum Mikroelektronik Dresden (ZMD) research center was created here, linked to VEB Kombinat Robotron, the largest electronics manufacturer in East Germany, which in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, employed 68,000 workers in Dresden. Also at that time the city of Chemnitz – then called Karl-Marx-Stadt – was already a technological reference. After the country's reunification, the Saxon authorities continued to support the experienced local industry with subsidies and simplification of bureaucracy.
The success of microelectronics made in Saxony also dynamites certain prejudices that still persist in Germany regarding the economic and industrial backwardness of the eastern länder that were part of the GDR, often regarded with sufficiency and superiority by Western Germans. “I was born and raised in the GDR, and today my impression is that there is no longer a difference between east and west Germany,” says Frank Bösenberg, managing director of the Silicon Saxony association. “What there are are regions that are structurally strong and others that are structurally weak.” This area of Saxony is one of the strong ones.
