NSF Announces $6 Million for Semiconductor Fabrication

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Science and Technology Council of Taiwan (NSTC) have announced a new partnership investing $6 million in six joint projects for fundamental research on advanced semiconductor chip design and fabrication.

The new awards will support collaborations between U.S. and Taiwan-based researchers on the design and fabrication of innovative semiconductor chips using the advanced processes available in Taiwan’s semiconductor foundries. NSF has provided $3.0 million to the U.S. researchers involved. Advanced chip designs promise to lower energy consumption of microelectronic devices and systems, reduce the environmental impacts of manufacturing, and increase performance measures such as speed, capacity and security. Applications include artificial intelligence, communications, computing, and sensing.
 
The six projects are:

•  240-GHz Energy-efficient CMOS MIMO Radar, University of California, Berkeley
• Co-design of Novel Electronic-photonic Systems for Energy-efficient Coherent Optical Interconnects, Texas A&M University
• On-chip CMOS-MEMS Infrared Spectroscopy Systems, University of California Davis
• Real-time Optimization of Transceiver Systems, Virginia Tech
• Runtime Reconfigurable Array Technology for AI/ML, UCLA
• Ultrafast, low-power AI chip with a new class of MRAM for learning and inference at edge, Stanford University

Learn more about the NSF Advanced Chip Engineering Design and Fabrication program here.