Silicon Box Selects Piedmont to Host €3.2B Chip Foundry for Italian Expansion

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The co-founders of Silicon Box, CEO Dr. Byung Joon (BJ) Han, Dr. Sehat  Sutardja, and Weili Dai, together with the Minister Adolfo Urso, Presidente Alberto Cirio of  the Piedmont region, and Mayor Alessandro Canelli of the municipality of Novara  announced that Novara in Piedmont will be the site of the company’s new, first-of-a-kind  advanced semiconductor packaging and testing foundry. The parties signed a letter of  intent outlining their commitment for collaboration related to the site and investment, this  morning, at the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy in Rome, subject to the European  Commission approval of the planned financial support to be granted by Italy.

The site in Novara and Piedmont was selected from a shortlist of sites and regions in  Northern Italy (Nord Italia) through a detailed evaluation process. This effort aimed at  ensuring that selection be aligned with the requirements and conditions necessary for the  planned facility, and prior commitments agreed between Silicon Box and the Italian  government.

“Silicon Box’s advanced packaging facility in Novara is expected to create up to 1,600  highly paid jobs and bring first-of-a-kind advanced semiconductor packaging and testing  capabilities to Italy, and to Europe,” said Dr. Byung Joon Han, CEO and cofounder of Silicon  Box. “We appreciate the cooperation of all the sites, municipalities and regions that  participated in our evaluation process. Every site was carefully reviewed and considered,  and each had its own independent merits that reinforced our decision to build in Italy.”

Earlier this year, Silicon Box announced its intention to collaborate with the Italian  government to invest up to €3.2B ($3.6B) in Northern Italy, as the site of a state-of-the-art  semiconductor assembly and test facility. The facility will help meet critical demand for  advanced packaging capacity to enable next generation technologies that Silicon Box  anticipates by 2028. The multi-year investment replicates Silicon Box’s flagship foundry in  Singapore, which has demonstrated capability and capacity for the world’s most advanced  semiconductor packaging solutions, before further expansion into 3D integration and  testing. The new integrated production facility is expected to serve as a catalyst for broader  ecosystem investments and innovation in Italy, as well as the rest of the European Union.

“We are excited to bring Italy to the forefront of chiplet deployment and the semiconductor  industry, through this investment into the world’s most advanced packaging solution. It will  enhance competitive strengths in design, artificial intelligence (AI), large language models  (LLMs), electronic vehicles (EVs) and automotive, mobile, wearables, smart consumer,  edge computing, and material sciences of the Italian ecosystem, and revolutionize  Europe’s position in the global [semiconductors] supply chain,” said Dr. Sehat Sutardja, co founder and Chairman of Silicon Box. 

“Design and planning for the facility is already underway, with construction to commence  pending European Commission approval of planned financial support by the Italian State,”  added co-founder, Weili Dai.

Silicon Box’s technology enables advanced chiplet integration (“advanced packaging”), on  a large manufacturing format for scale and efficiency. The chiplet concept is an alternative  to conventional semiconductor manufacturing, which focused on building entire systems on-chips (SoCs) on silicon wafers, then moving to traditional packaging processes.  Chiplets describe manufacture of individual system modalities as standalone “chiplets” on  a wafer, then integrating these separate functionalities into a system through advanced  packaging, creating a system-in-package (SiPs).

The chiplet concept itself was introduced by Silicon Box co-founder Dr. Sutardja at the  International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in 2015, where he was plenary speaker. Dr. Han is the inventor of semiconductor packaging solutions fundamental to  enable chiplets through advanced packaging. Their long-standing collaboration has been  the basis for Silicon Box’s record-breaking progress as a company in the semiconductor  manufacturing space, traditionally dominated by a few large companies.

Silicon Box’s Novara factory is planned to begin construction in mid-2025, with initial  production expected to begin in 2028.