(Bloomberg) -- The Pentagon will award $269 million to 33 chip research projects across the US, marking the second disbursement of funds from a program designed to bolster semiconductor efforts for the military.
The funding comes from the 2022 Chips and Science Act, which aims to revitalize the US semiconductor industry and reduce reliance on Asia. The Chips Act allotted the Pentagon $2 billion across five years for what’s known as the Microelectronics Commons program, and officials last year designated eight hubs around the country.
Those hubs — which now involve around 1,200 organizations in 27 states and Washington, DC — will help run the projects announced Tuesday. They’ll focus on technologies ranging from AI to quantum computing.
Microelectronics Commons is one of several federal semiconductor research initiatives to emerge in the past year. The Commerce Department, which is responsible for most of the Chips Act money, announced a selection process in July for three new government-backed chip research entities. They’re focused on design, machinery and prototyping, and leverage money from two new Chips Act funds: a $5 billion National Semiconductor Technology Center, or NSTC, and $3 billion National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, or NAPMP.
The Defense Department the next week made its own prototyping announcement, separate from the Chips Act push, which it described as the “first-ever national center for advancing US-based microelectronics manufacturing.” The Microelectronics Commons program, meanwhile, seeks to fill “a key gap” between prototypes made in the lab and those at the factory level, according to David Honey, deputy under secretary of defense for research and engineering.
Asked about overlap between those initiatives, a Commerce official emphasized that there is close coordination across projects. The official pointed to the Pentagon’s membership on the steering committee for the NSTC, as well as the fact that the director of Commerce’s packaging program, the NAPMP, had previously led the Defense Department’s prototyping effort. Packaging involves encasing chips in materials to protect them and connect them to other components.
Still, a recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine urged the US government to better coordinate across agencies to “avoid duplication and ensure the exchange of promising advances.” The researchers specifically cited the four programs across Commerce and the Pentagon and said that “there should be fewer efforts, and national centers, with perhaps a drive toward only one.”
Past disagreements among US officials have hampered chip research goals. Earlier this year, a funding spat involving Commerce, the Pentagon and Congress over a military chip manufacturing program led Commerce to scrap a Chips Act effort focused on commercial R&D — and ultimately decline to fund an Applied Materials Inc. project that many felt was key to the broader undertaking.
Of the government-run research initiatives, Microelectronics Commons was the first to commit Chips Act funding to specific projects. But there’s still some concern that the eight hubs may struggle to operate as a unified network.
In particular, hub participants have struggled with a lack of shared tools for chip design, according to people involved in the planning who requested anonymity to speak candidly. There’s also been concern about the cost of those tools — called electronic design automation, or EDA — without the student discounts sometimes offered to university research programs, the people said.
The funding announced Tuesday includes $39 million for a “cross-hub enablement solution” award, which would provide shared EDA access to six of the eight hubs, according to a Pentagon spokesperson, who added that officials are working to finalize contracts with EDA vendors.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.