Semiconductor Research Corp, DARPA, Launch University Nets

(National Science Foundation)

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Virginia unveiled their support for six U.S. university research centers. STARnet, as the program is called, will devote $194 million microelectronics research over five years.

SRC is university-company research consortium for semiconductors and related technologies that includes industry partners Applied Materials, GlobalFoundries, IBM, Intel Corporation, Micron Technology, Raytheon, Texas Instruments, and United Technologies. DARPA is the Department of Defense’s advanced research agency with the mission to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military.

Each of the six universities — University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of California (UC) in Los Angeles, University of Notre Dame, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and University of California in Berkeley — will support its own sub-network of campuses. Overall, STARnet is expected to support 145 research professors and about 400 graduate students at 39 universities, including the six main centers.

At University of Michigan, its Center for Future Architectures Research is exploring architectures beyond today’s complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) circuits, which are anticipated to reach their density limits by 2020. Among the alternative technologiess under study are 3D interconnects, new types of memories, and programmable logic. Participating with Michigan are Columbia, Duke, Georgia Tech, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, Illinois, Washington, and Virginia.

University of Minnesota’s Center for Spintronic Materials, Interfaces and Novel Architectures plans to bring together researchers in spintronic materials, devices, circuits and architectures that take advantage of electrons’ quantum properties. The researchers will explore the building blocks that allow development of new spin-based multi-functional, scalable memory devices and computational architectures. Participating universities include: UC Riverside, Cornell, Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, Alabama, Iowa, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Penn State, UC Santa Barbara, Michigan, Nebraska and Wisconsin.

At UCLA, the Center for Function Accelerated nanoMaterial Engineering will investigate new atomic-scale engineered materials and structures of multi-function oxides, metals, and semiconductors to accelerate innovations in analog, logic and memory devices for an accelerated impact on the semiconductor and defense industries. Taking part with UCLA are Columbia, Cornell, UC Berkeley, MIT, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford, UC Irvine, Purdue, Rice, UC Riverside, North Carolina State, Caltech, Penn, West Virginia, and Yale.

Notre Dame’s Center for Low Energy Systems Technology is expected to explore the physics of new materials and devices that can lead to greater  advances in integrated circuits and systems. Notre Dame’s research will also study the material systems for ultralow voltage and steep-slope transistors that provide a more abrupt transition between off and on states. Participating with Notre Dame are Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Penn State, Purdue, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, University of Texas (UT) in Austin, and UT Dallas.

The Center for Systems on Nanoscale Information fabriCs at University of Illinois plans to investigate nanoscale fabrics beyond current CMOS architectures through attributes within statistical-inference-based applications, architectures, and circuits to achieve higher levels of robustness and energy efficiency. Taking part with Illinois are UC Berkeley, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, Michigan, Princeton, and Carnegie Mellon.

UC Berkeley’s TerraSwarm Research Center aims to make possible the simple, reliable, and secure deployment of multiple advanced distributed sense-control applications on shared, massively distributed, heterogeneous, and mostly uncoordinated platforms through open architectures. Participating with UC Berkeley are Michigan, Washington, UT Dallas, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Penn, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, and UC San Diego.

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