GW is partnering with Google and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology to manufacture chips to be used for nanotechnology and semiconductor technology, according to a press release issued earlier this month.
GW is one of the five universities, along with the University of Michigan, the University of Maryland, Brown University and Carnegie Mellon University, partnering with Google and NIST in agreement to design the chips. NIST expects to develop at least 40 types of chips that will be “optimized for different applications.”
The designs will be publicly accessible, giving start-up companies, research universities and researchers the freedom to create and expand how the chips can be used.
“By creating a new and affordable domestic supply of chips for research and development, this collaboration aims to unleash the innovative potential of researchers and startups across the nation,” Laurie Locascio, the NIST’s director, said in the release.
The collaboration between Google and NIST was announced before the enactment of the CHIPS for America program, a $50 billion strategy Biden signed in August that is designed to create access to innovation and expand well-paying manufacturing jobs.
The design and manufacture of specific chip designs can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, limiting access to the chips, and these designs aim to make more affordable versions of chips that are already on the market, according to the release. The chips will be designed as industry-standard 200-millimeter discs that are compatible with the manufacturing robots used to increase productivity at semiconductor facilities.
Both NIST and the partnering research universities will design the chips’ circuitry, which will create new specialized structures to work together with existing technologies. The chips’ innovations will be used to improve devices that can be used for memory devices, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, bioelectronics and nanosensors.
“Google has a long history of leadership in open-source,” William Grannis, the CEO of Google Public Sector, said in the release. “Moving to an open-source framework fosters reproducibility, which helps researchers from public and private institutions iterate on each other’s work. It also democratizes innovation in nanotechnology and semiconductor research.”
