Europe’s stealth leading-edge process technology

By Nick Flaherty, eeNews Europe | February 23, 2026

Europe has been at the forefront of semiconductor process technology for 40 years, but recently the calls to have leading edge technology in the region have grown louder.

For the last 20 years, a technology has been developed in the region that provides leading edge performance and can be manufactured in Europe. That technology is fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI), and the latest pilot line at CEA-Leti in Grenoble, France, promises to deliver the same performance as today’s 3nm technology, with lower cost and lower power consumption.

This process can be manufactured in Europe which is a critical step forward, not just for the automotive and industrial markets, but for chips for the exploding AI market where the region lags behind.

However the fact that FD-SOI can be a leading edge process for AI chips is perhaps not well known, as it has been focussed on analog mixed signal and radio devices.

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