Silicon Saxony is a registered industry association of around 600 companies in the microelectronics and related high-tech sectors in Saxony, Germany.[1] Many of those firms are situated in the north of Dresden.
The term "Silicon Saxony" originated in a 1998 Time magazine article, comparing the former East German state to Silicon Valley.[2]
Industrial fields
The companies develop and produce computer calculation and memory chips or new materials and electronics for solar companies. The developed and produced small semiconductors chips are used in all kinds of cars, mobile phones, TV sets and so on.
History
Even before Germany's reunification, Dresden was a major center of microelectronics in the Eastern bloc with 3,500 employees. While mechanical engineering, which has a long history in the south of eastern Germany, suffered after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the microelectronics industry was, with public help from the state, one of the first industrial sectors in Saxony to recover. Although having many more employees today than before 1990, the sector is constantly under pressure because South Korea in particular is very keen to attract the industry.
Saxony and Germany are however bound to the competition laws of the European Union, but was able to keep and expand most of the research parts of the industry that it had started with. These parts are seen as successful, but also as very risky whenever a larger company has serious problems because the sector demands a high concentration of resources to succeed.
Scientific environment
Dresden, as core-region of Silicon Saxony and yet without the headquarters of many of today's big companies, is nevertheless a very remarkable technology center with one large Technical University (German TU), ten other universities and most of all an unparalleled density of semi-public institutes of applied high-technologies in many fields (for example the Max Planck Society, Fraunhofer Society, Leibniz institutes, Helmholtz Association and other German academic elite institutions).
