Update on Cluster 4 “Digital” and the Chips Joint Undertaking
Cluster 4 (Digital, Industry & Space) is one of the largest clusters under Pillar two of Horizon Europe with an overall budget in excess of €15 billion. To date, Irish participants have been doing very well in this area with more than €115M in signed grant agreements to date. This equates to approximately 2.2% of the available budget.
The most recent “Digital” call closed on 19th March 2024. The call had 12 topics with a combined budget of ~ €243M. Overall, a total of 356 proposals were submitted in response to the call with about 34 expected to be funded. The following table shows the number of proposals submitted for each topic. Results are expected in July.
An amendment to the 2023-2024 Work Programme was published on the 17th April and can be found here. The main changes included the introduction of some new / updated topics with deadlines in September 2024. The new / updated topics are list in the table below.
Update on the Chips Joint Undertaking
Activities under the Chips Joint undertaking are split into “initiative” and non-initiative”. The “initiative activities cover the new activities introduced under the EU Chips Act, namely:-
· Pilot Lines
· Design Platform
· Competence Centres
The first call for pilot lines has now been completed and 4 proposals have been selected in the areas of:-
· Advanced sub 2nm leading-edge system on chip technology
· Advanced Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator technologies targeting 7nm
· Advanced Packaging and Heterogenous Integration
· Advanced semiconductor devices based on Wide Bandgap materials
The successful proposals are now going through grant preparation and represent an EU investment of €1.6B. This will be matched by a commensurate amount of funding on the part of the participating countries.
In preparation for a call for Competence Centres in Semiconductors later this Summer, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment has launched a call for expressions of interest for candidate centres with a deadline of 29 May. Details can be found at Call for Expressions of Interest - Competence Centre in Semiconductors - DETE (enterprise.gov.ie)
The “non-initiative” part refers to the standard annual calls for R&D projects that were a feature of the Key Digital Technologies Joint Undertaking (predecessor programme to Chips JU). This year's call is again a two stage call with a stage 1 deadline on 14th May and a stage 2 deadline on 17th September. Further details can be found at Non-Initiative Calls 2024 · Chips Ju (europa.eu).