Why tooling access is a bottleneck for Europe’s semiconductor success
Custom silicon is increasingly part of the innovation toolbox across industries. While demand for chip design is growing, the underlying ecosystem is difficult to access. Tools are expensive, workflows closed, and the path from idea to fabricated chip is long and costly.
To understand what this means for Sweden and Europe, Semicon Sweden spoke with Olof Kindgren, Senior Digital Design Engineer at Qamcom and co-founder of the FOSSi Foundation (Free and Open Source Silicon), an organization working to make chip development more accessible across academia, industry and society.
“Chip design is 20 years behind software” – what do people mean by that?
“When I started working with chip design, I was surprised by how closed the ecosystem was,” Olof says. “Coming from open-source software, I expected more reuse and sharing. Instead, most things were developed over and over again inside companies.”He compares today’s chip design environment to software before open tooling became widespread. “Today anyone can download Python and try an idea. In chip design, you can’t even test an idea without committing a lot of time and money.”
A turning point came in 2015, when RISC-V gained serious industry backing. RISC-V is an open instruction set architecture: the “language” a processor understands. “That was the first time open-source silicon moved beyond small-scale interest. Suddenly, large industrial players started paying attention.”
What are the challenges for Europe to increase semiconductor resilience?
Kindgren points to a structural imbalance. “In software you have large players, but also many mid-sized and small companies. In chip design, it’s mostly large players. Smaller ones tend to get acquired or disappear – and that’s not good for innovation.” This affects far beyond the semiconductor industry itself. “There are many companies with deep expertise in areas like medtech, defense or industrial systems. When they need chip design to enable their product, there is currently a massive barrier to entry.”
Part of the challenge is that the software used to design chips, often called EDA (Electronic Design Automation), is dominated by a small number of global vendors. This is sometimes referred to as an “EDA Monopoly,” typically describing the “big three”: Synopsys, Cadence, and Siemens EDA (Mentor). The issue isn’t only concentration and pricing power, but what it does to the ecosystem: fewer entry points, fewer alternatives, and fewer ways for new ideas to scale. For Europe, it is relevant to also note that basically all design tools today are developed in the US.
What makes chip design so hard to access in practice?
“It’s not just about learning chip design and the tools,” Olof explains. “It’s the entire path. You need access to proprietary tools, you need to sign non-disclosure agreements to a foundry (the manufacturer that will fabricate the chip) and then you wait six to twelve months and spend hundreds of thousands before you can start testing your idea.
”That reality makes experimentation almost impossible. You can’t explore ideas in small steps, the way you can in software”. A key part of what makes chip development so gated is access to the PDK (Process Design Kit). The PDK contains the technical rules for how a chip can be manufactured in a specific process: layer definitions, transistor models, and design constraints. “Without that, you can’t build anything real,” Olof says. “In that sense, the PDK is the interface to manufacturing.”
If PDKs are the interface to chip manufacturing, what should Europe focus on next?
“As the EU invests in strengthening its semiconductor ecosystem, open source should be seen as an enabling technology – not an alternative ideology.” Olof points out that open-source PDKs would enable companies, maybe especially small and medium size compaines operating close to chip design but rarely take the step to actually design. In his view, it’s not about making everyone a chip designer, but about lowering the threshold to experiment and learn. Kindgren uses Sweden’s success in both software and music as an analogy. “Our success in the music industry didn’t come from having the best studios. It came from broad access to instruments. The same goes for software. We don’t need everyone to become a chip designer, but we need more people who are familiar with the technology and not afraid of it.”
He also argues that universities should increasingly use open toolchains and open source PDKs instead of monopoly player’s tooling. “If everything is locked behind NDAs, universities can’t share designs and industry can’t reuse research.” With more open workflows, research can more easily translate into real industrial value. “Now we see a few fabs opening up their PDKs, and that changes things. Suddenly people can experiment, collaborate and build on each other’s work.”Olof does not want to limit the potential to specialized semiconductors.“Europe talks a lot about semiconductor sovereignty, but the shortages we saw weren’t about leading-edge chips,” Olof says. “They were about simpler chips made with 20-year-old process technologies. Those are cheaper to manufacture – and incredibly important.” He adds that he is involved in a European initiative looking at what it would take, economically and practically, to increase access to fabrication for mature process technologies.
Are there any good examples you can to lift up in terms of inspiration?
“The chip industry is extremely conservative with tools from the previous millenium and an aging homogenous workforce,” Olof says. For him, accessibility is not only about costit is also about making the field more attractive to the next generation. With traditional tools, you are left behind in the large pradigm shifts such as with AI and cloud scaling. According to Olof, Europe and Sweden should focus on access and pathways. “Smaller, accessible fabs, open interfaces, and support for open-source infrastructure would make a huge difference.”
As a Swedish example, he highlights Linköping University (LiU) as a strong environment for open-source digital design. “There’s a history of doing open source there. And there are people and projects that have become widely used internationally.” He sees it as a reminder that local clusters can matter – especially when they combine long-term competence with an open, collaborative mindset.