In an era where performance and efficiency are essential, heterogeneous integration is rapidly becoming a foundational technology. The webinar “Heterogeneous Integration in Action: Powering the Next Era of Connectivity” featuring speakers from the HiCONNECTS project dives deep into the advances, challenges, and ecosystem-building necessary to bring next-generation integrated systems to life across Europe and beyond.
HiCONNECTS (Heterogeneous Integration for Connectivity and Sustainability) brings together more than 60 partners across Europe under the Chips JU to explore how packaging, materials, architectures and software can be co-designed for industrial uptake.
A Bold Ambition: Why This Matters
Connectivity is the lifeblood of our digital age. From smart mobility and data centers to consumer electronics and factory automation, demands on performance, energy efficiency, miniaturization and flexibility keep growing.
Heterogeneous integration offers a path to meet those demands by enabling dissimilar technologies, for example chips, sensors, RF, photonics, advanced packaging and AI accelerators to work together more seamlessly than ever before.
Set against the backdrop of Europe’s broader ambitions under the EU Chips Act to strengthen its semiconductor ecosystem and technological leadership, projects like HiCONNECTS demonstrate how coordinated R&D can translate into industrially relevant demonstrators and use cases.
Key Themes from the Webinar
Below are some of the most compelling takeaways from the session:
From Components to Systems
Across all talks, one message was clear: heterogeneous integration is no longer just about better individual devices, it’s about system-level co-design.
Speakers showed this in very concrete ways:
- In power device manufacturing, improving yield, process control and data correlation across the wafer line directly improves the reliability of integrated systems.
- In smart logistics and manufacturing, autonomous mobile robots combine LiDAR, cameras, 5G, on-board compute and collaborative AI to operate safely on factory floors.
- In life-science imaging, cryo-electron microscopes, AI-assisted screening and high-performance computing are tied together into a single workflow.
- In connected and autonomous mobility, radar, V2X modems, explainable AI software and human–machine interfaces form one integrated chain.
You can no longer treat sensing, connectivity, compute and packaging in isolation – the value lies in how they are composed into complete systems.
Ecosystem & Consortium Dynamics
To realize heterogeneous integration, no single entity can go it alone. The webinar highlighted how large consortia such as HiCONNECTS bringing in universities, research institutes, packaging houses, system vendors, and tool suppliers are key. A strong theme: modularity and interfaces must be agreed upon early to allow parallel work across partners.
Why Europe’s Timing is Critical
HiCONNECTS sits within a broader European push to strengthen the continent’s semiconductor capabilities and reduce systemic vulnerabilities in critical value chains. Europe already hosts strong players in photonics, packaging, system integration, robotics, automotive and research.
What the webinar underscored is that coordination and shared infrastructure are now decisive:
- aligning manufacturing know-how with AI and data analytics,
- connecting application-driven demonstrators with underlying technology platforms, and
- ensuring results can be replicated and scaled beyond a single lab or pilot line.
Final Thoughts
The “Heterogeneous Integration in Action” webinar was a timely, forward-looking snapshot of how Europe’s microelectronics ecosystem is moving from component-level innovation to system-level co-design, grounded in real industrial use cases.
The journey is far from complete, but the payoff is clear: higher-performance systems, new classes of products in mobility, health and manufacturing, and a stronger, more resilient European position in semiconductors.
Kartikey Srivastava, Manager, EU Projects
SEMI Europe
Phone: +49 151 1436 6324
Email: [email protected]
