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Inside FAMES: How Europe Depends on RTO Collaboration
Feb. 09, 2026 –
Inaugurated Jan. 30 in Grenoble, the FAMES pilot line brings together Europe’s RTOs to mature key chip technologies for industry.
By Pat Brans, EE Times
When the European Commission (EC) talks about semiconductor sovereignty, it doesn’t mean building a single major fab that does everything. Instead, the EC is betting on a distributed model: tightly linked pilot lines operated by research and technology organizations (RTOs), each contributing specialized process modules that industry can access early.
According to Anne Roule, head of the Semiconductor Fab division at CEA-Leti, collaboration among European RTOs is nothing new. Mechanisms are already in place, particularly around wafer processing, cleanroom operations, and shared manufacturing methodologies. For example, her organization may send wafers to another institute, such as imec, to carry out certain technology modules before being returned or passed along to another partner. She also noted that collaboration sometimes takes place at the design level, where RTOs jointly contribute to device or process development without necessarily exchanging wafers.
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