The announcement was made on March 11th: Silicon Box, a newly formed startup from Singapore, has decided to invest 3.2 billion euros in Italy for a plant in the north of the country.
Silicon Box doesn’t actually make processors in the strict sense of the word: the startup has found a way to interconnect chiplets using extremely short connections, thus maximizing performance and eliminating potential bottlenecks.
The processors are produced elsewhere, the wafers are sent to the Silicon Box factory which finalizes them, cutting the various dies from the wafer, interconnecting them, testing them and packaging them.
A factory for the final phase of chip production, entirely similar to the one that Intel was supposed to build in Italy.
Yesterday, during a press conference for the signing of the letter of intent held in Rome at Palazzo Piacentini, headquarters of Mimit, the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, the co-founders of Silicon Box Sehat Sutardja and Weili Dai, the President of the Piedmont Region Alberto Cirio and the Mayor of Novara Alessandro Canelli have announced that the new large production plant will be built in Novara. It will be the first plant of its kind in Europe, with a total investment of 3.2 billion euros.
The Novara site would have been chosen by the company through an in-depth evaluation process, supported by independent experts and consultants, even if the green light from Europe is awaited, because the investment still needs to be approved by the Commission. According to estimates, when it is fully operational, the plant will create 1,600 new direct jobs, in addition to indirect ones linked to the construction of the factory and logistics. The plant will be built and managed following European principles of minimizing environmental impact.
“Today’s announcement – said Urso – confirms the validity of our strategic plan on microelectronics: a driving effect of investments in chips in Italy is underway. Silicon Box is a model case, it will be the first chiplet production plant in Europe. An industrial partner that will help us grow in the high technology sector and that will allow us to increase our design capabilities and know-how.”
According to the president of the Cirio Region this is the first step to transform Piedmont into the Italian Silicon Valley: “Silicon Box’s investment demonstrates that investing in Piedmont is convenient and confirms the growing attractiveness of our territory, which has overcome the competition from regions such as Lombardy and Veneto. With the TAV and the Third Crossing, which will be completed in the next few years, Piedmont will become a crucial node in the European routes of mobility and exchange of goods. We have worked hard and believed in this project, which represents the first step of Silicon Valley in Italy, making Piedmont increasingly central in Italy and Europe”.
If this were to come to fruition, it would be a great opportunity for Italy, and it would also be the second major announcement in the last two weeks: STMicroelectronics, last week, announced that it had approved a 5 billion investment to strengthen its production hub in Catania, where 200 mm silicon carbide (SiC) wafers will be created to be used to produce power inverters, which are essential for producing electric cars.
