At the opening of the ChipNL Competence Center at the Noviotech Campus in Nijmegen, optimism and uncertainty collided. Behind the ceremonial tone, a deeper question emerged during a discussion session on the influence of artificial intelligence on chip design. How should Europe respond?
At the recent ChipNL CC launch, Anna Paar, partnership manager at the competence center, chaired a panel with four industry and academic experts: Bratislav Tasic (NXP), Giuseppe Garcea (Axelera AI), Christiaan Baaij (Qbaylogic) and Aida Todri-Sanial (Eindhoven University of Technology). A revealing discussion ensued – not about whether AI will influence chip design, but about how profoundly, and who in Europe will take the lead.
NXP’s Tasic opened the discussion with a historical analogy. “If you had a time machine and went back a hundred years,” he said, “you’d find a job called ‘computer’ – a person crunching numbers. Technology didn’t eliminate them; it just changed what they did.” His message: every technological leap – from calculators to digital computers – has redefined human roles rather than erased them.
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