Intel announced Friday it has won the second phase of a U.S. Defense Department contract to allow the Pentagon to access Intel’s chip packaging research and related work at plants in Arizona and Oregon.
Terms of the contract were not immediately disclosed by Intel or the Pentagon. The State-of-the-Art Heterogeneous Integration Prototype (SHIP) program is run by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division and administered by the National Security Technology Accelerator.
Nicole Petta, principal director of microelectronics for the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, said it is “imperative” for DoD to partner with leading semiconductor companies like Intel to ensure that the U.S. defense industry can continue to deliver cutting edge electronics for national security.
She said that heterogeneous assembly technology for chips is a “critical investment for the DoD and our nation.”
Heterogeneous packaging allows assembly of multiple, separately manufactured integrated circuit dies onto a single package to increase performance while also reducing power, size and weight. SHIP allows the Pentagon to access Intel’s advanced heterogeneous packaging technologies including embedded multi-die interconnect bridge (EMIB), 3D Foveros and Co-EMIB.
Second phase SHIP will develop prototypes of multichip packages and work to accelerate interface standards, protocols and security for heterogeneous systems. SHIP prototypes will also integrate special-purpose government chips with Intel’s commercially available chip products, including field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), application-specific integrated circuits and CPUs.
SHIP allows DoD to “take advantage of Intel’s advanced semiconductor packaging capabilities, diversifying their supply chain and protecting their intellectual property while also supporting ongoing semiconductor R&D in the U.S. and preserving critical capabilities onshore,” said Jim Brinker, president and general manager of Intel Federal LLC.
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