Now that the $52 billion for domestic fabs has been approved in the CHIPS Act, what’s next?
Intel, Micron and other major companies are investing billions of their own dollars in new domestic chip fabs, but production of actual chips is still years from fruition. Will CHIPS Act funds continue to serve as seed money for continued innovation?
As a partial answer, major companies, including Intel, Micron and Analog Devices, are already working with nonprofit Mitre Engenuity and announced the Semiconductor Alliance in April to martial resources to boost workforce development, investment in the chip sector and supply chain resilience while protecting intellectual property.
The group laid out a vision for a National Semiconductor Technology Center nearly a year ago that focuses on such principles with a goal of protecting US economic development and national security. The vision appeared later in a proposal to NIST and the Department of Commerce.
Having set the groundwork, leaders of the Alliance have faced tough realities and done some soul searching about how and why the US has fallen behind on chip production over several decades, a scenario that leaders admit will require years to correct:
--The US now produces less than 12% of the world’s chips, even though it boasts the greatest chip designs at companies such as Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, Intel and Micron, a concern even President Biden and members of Congress have noted in passage of the CHIPS Act .
-- While the US hosts some of the greatest universities in the world, chipmakers face difficulty recruiting top talent and the never-ending concern that high school students are not focused on future STEM careers.
“We do have technology competency in the US, but the chips are manufactured elsewhere,” principally with the most advanced chips coming from TSMC in Taiwan, Raj Jammy, chief technology for advanced technologies at Mitre Engenuity told Fierce Electronics.
TSMC’s dominance in advanced chip nodes is something “the US should have done earlier,” he added. “How do we innovate? One thing is clear, it’s always good to be watchful. We want to be ahead of the game and don’t underestimate the opponent … We should be planning more. We’re not the best in certain areas where we can learn.”
Laurie Giandomenico, managing director of Mitre Engenuity, said the focus of many Silicon Valley software startups has been to spend three years developing an app and then get out. “We’re learning we can’t do that,” she said. “Innovation does not come in three-year multiples.”
The Alliance, she said, is focusing on a long-term technology vision “and how to be competitive and seed investment.”
Building the STEM workforce continues to be a major challenge for the nation and the Alliance, both Giandomenico and Jammy agreed. One area of focus will be on raising the profile of semiconductors.
“Chips aren’t sexy,” Giandomenico said. “We need to demystify chips and say why are they so important. They are the new oil. It’s hard to attract young people to the industry when it is so misunderstood. It needs good marketing.”
In a recent meeting of 150 engineers, she said many were concerned that college engineering students gravitate toward computer science degrees instead of electrical engineering, the degree area that is most directly associated with chip and hardware design.
“For the semiconductor workforce across the board, there’s a challenge,” Jammy said. “It’s something we cannot solve in three to five years. It’s generational. How do we get more children into this?”
Chip resilience is “very important for the nation,” he added. “We need to do this right. We want agencies and industry to come together and come up with a plan of action for how to ensure a lasting solution and economic security.”
The CHIPS Act’s passage and greater focus on supply chain have helped prod companies and policymakers into action, Giandomenico said. “We’ve been able to define areas where companies can collaborate. We all have similar goals about protecting the supply chain. We feel our job is to hold everybody accountable.”
RELATED: Here’s the latest hot list of cool chip fabs coming to the US