Smart Chip Industry in the Kingdom

The Smart Chip Industry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was announced at the "Launch" event held in the capital, Riyadh, on August 25, 2021. Abdullah al-Swaha, the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, revealed the production of the first smart chip in the Kingdom for military, commercial, and civil applications.

King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) launched the Saudi Semiconductors Program (SSP) on March 30, 2022, aimed at supporting research, development, and human resource qualification in the field of electronic chip design and localization.

The Saudi Semiconductors Program aimed to localize the technology for manufacturing electronic chips, which are relied upon by many industries, including electric vehicles. The Saudi project comes after a shortage of electronic chips in 2021 led to a crisis for many global supply chains, such as the smartphone and automotive industries, among many others.

The Saudi Research, Development and Innovation Authority, in collaboration with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), organized the Future of Semiconductor Forum on March 30, 2022. The forum featured the Nobel Prize winner in Physics and semiconductor technology specialist, Shuji Nakamura, and was attended by the recipient of the King Faisal Prize in 2015 and the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 2017, Dr. Omar Yaghi, as well as the recipient of the King Faisal Prize for Medicine in gene-editing technology, Dr. David Roshan Liu.

The Saudi Program for Smart Chip Localization aims to conduct scientific research in chip technologies and train human resources in designing and producing smart chips to support the localization of the semiconductor industry in the Kingdom.

The program provides researchers at Saudi universities with the opportunity to manufacture chips using the latest technologies by providing the necessary tools for their design and supporting the high manufacturing costs. Localizing the electronic chip and semiconductor industry contributes to achieving the targets of Saudi Vision 2030 programs.

Semiconductor technologies (electronic chips) constitute the foundation for vital fields such as energy, sensors, and information technology, forming the basis of the third and fourth industrial revolutions. The international focus is now on enhancing national capabilities in the semiconductor industry, especially after global supply chains were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Ensuring the security of semiconductor supply chains has become a national priority in many parts of the world.

The Future of Semiconductors Forum was launched on March 30, 2022, in Riyadh City, supporting and underscoring the anticipation of the industrial future of this type of investment, given the fact that the Kingdom has embarked on a phase of localizing military industries, targeting 50 percent localization of military spending by 2030, and shifting towards the production of electric vehicles and other diverse industries that are increasingly reliant on semiconductor products.

Smart chips have revolutionized the world, serving as the foundation for vital fields such as energy, sensor devices, information technology, automotive and aerospace electronics, photovoltaic cell efficiency, and microelectromechanical systems.