Assoc. Prof. Georgi Angelov: The demand for electronic engineers will exceed software specialties

Bulgaria is in a good position in the trend of microelectronics development in Europe, the lecturer believes. Today, details of the proposal for European legislation on chips are expected to become clear. The old continent is currently catching up with global leaders in chip manufacturing. So far, the known plans are for the European Union to produce 20% of the world's chips by 2030, and behind this ambition lie investments of 42 billion euros. As a budget and goal, this is achievable, according to Assoc. Prof. Georgi Angelov, head of the Department of "Microelectronics" at the Technical University of Sofia, who also works in a laboratory for chip design and development. The industry in the field of microelectronics, or chips, is on the order of several hundred billion dollars annually, it is a huge business, says Angelov. In Europe, there is a drain of production capacities – factories where chips are produced, notes Assoc. Prof. Angelov. "They are called 'clean rooms'. The value of one such factory is on the order of several billion dollars. This type of production capacity is concentrated in Southeast Asia or in America. In Europe, the part related to design, development of technologies remains." With the disruption of supply chains, which we have observed in the last two years due to the pandemic, it turns out that when you do not have production capacities within Europe, this creates many difficulties, comments Georgi Angelov. According to him, "this is the justification for why we should think about even legislative regulation of this type of business." In Europe, there are production capacities, but they belong to foreign companies, clarifies the lecturer. R&D centers exist in Belgium, Ireland, and France. It is logical to close the cycle, emphasizes Assoc. Prof. Angelov. "When production is outside the framework of Europe, this disrupts the full cycle for delivering the finished product." Georgi Angelov believes that currently in our country, the core related to microelectronics, according to our scale as a state, is good. "Bulgaria is currently in a good position. In the last 20 years, software sciences were a priority. The trend in the next 30+ years – the demand for electronic engineering, in particular micro- and nanoelectronics, to exceed as a trend software specialties." "We are here, and we are not negligible. We are not stepping on a bare field," summarizes Angelov.

See the interview here

BNS, 08.02.2022