Last week, the fall 2025 edition of the Automotive Chiplet Forum (ACF) made a landmark stop in Heilbronn, Germany, home to imec’s newly inaugurated Advanced Chip Design Accelerator (ACDA) competence center. Against the backdrop of the Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence (IPAI), around 120 attendees from across the automotive value chain gathered to explore the latest chiplet developments.
A few highlights from these two days:
A strategic launch in Heilbronn
The Automotive Chiplet Forum coincided with the official inauguration of imec’s new Baden-Württemberg office in Heilbronn. This strategic move reinforces imec’s commitment to chiplet-based innovation in automotive.
Or as Bart Placklé, VP Automotive at imec, states: “The ACDA in Heilbronn is where automotive chiplet innovation comes to life, and where Europe’s leadership in automotive compute is being forged. We are very proud to further expand our chiplet roadmap here, right in the birthplace of the automobile sector.”
Collaboration on a fast track: new partners join the Automotive Chiplet Program (ACP)
The forum also marked an important milestone for the Automotive Chiplet Program (ACP) with the onboarding of several new partners.
GlobalFoundries (GF) has joined as a foundry partner, providing advanced manufacturing capabilities, a differentiated technology portfolio and GF’s global footprint of fabs in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to support the development and manufacturing of the ACP’s automotive-ready, chiplet-based platforms. Their engagement broadens imec’s international ecosystem and reinforces the joint mission to develop and industrialize a cutting-edge, automotive chiplet architecture.
Simultaneously, Infineon, Silicon Box, STATS ChipPAC, and Japan’s TIER IV, leader in autonomous driving technologies, expressed their commitment to participate.
Building the “Airbus” of automotive compute
Attendees also gained exclusive insights from a series of high-level keynotes and panel discussions. Updates on the Chassis Project, a new European CHIPS JU project dedicated to heterogeneous integration for automotive high-performance computing (HPC), and other cornerstone initiatives driving Europe’s automotive compute roadmap, took center stage.
Additionally, it became clear that the automotive chiplet ecosystem continues to expand and reinforces the vision that Europe is equipped to build AI-powered vehicles, with chiplet-based platforms as the backbone of next-generation automotive compute. Or as Bart Placklé noted: “Chiplets are creating the ‘Airbus’ of automotive high-performance compute.”
What’s next?
The momentum doesn’t halt in Heilbronn. The next step will be the European Executive Forum, a high-level platform for decision-makers and strategy leaders to chart the course of chiplet evolution.
The urgency from ACF is clear: investments alone will be insufficient without shared priorities. Achieving digital sovereignty in automotive compute will require industry and government alignment, and interoperable chiplets built on open standards.
Curious to see how these insights will be further gaining speed? Updates will follow at the next Automotive Chiplet Forum. Stay tuned for more details on the next edition.
More info?
Want to know more about the Automotive Chiplet Program or imec’s activities in automotive? Check out the automotive technologies webpage or click the button below to get in touch.
