Microelectronics research group will support new, existing tech
NewsDecember 30, 2021
ARLINGTON, Va. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will join a long-term university research collaboration -- the Joint University Microelectronics Program 2.0 (JUMP 2.0) -- together with the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and a consortium of defense and commercial semiconductor companies.
JUMP 2.0, the next stage of an earlier SRC-led collaboration formed to support university research centers focused on keeping the U.S. at the forefront of microelectronics innovation, is aimed at supporting high-risk, high-payoff research that addresses existing and emerging challenges in information and communication technologies.
Dev Palmer, deputy director of DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) and the lead on JUMP 2.0, said of the program: “Starting with the Focus Center Research Program (FCRP) consortium in 1998, DARPA has maintained strong collaborations with academia, the defense industrial base, and commercial semiconductor industry to accelerate the pace of innovation and chart a path forward in advancing microelectronics. JUMP 2.0 will build on that legacy and serves as one critical component of MTO’s plans for the next phase of the Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI).”
SRC is currently soliciting proposals from U.S. universities and associated research institutes to lead a JUMP 2.0 center, with the research themes being cognition, or next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) systems and architectures; communications and connectivity, or efficient communication technologies for information and communications systems; intelligent sensing to action, or sensing capabilities and embedded intelligence to enable fast and efficient generation of actions; systems and architectures for distributed compute, or distributed computing systems and architectures in an energy-efficient compute and accelerator fabric; intelligent memory and storage, or emerging memory devices and storage arrays for intelligent memory systems; advanced monolithic and heterogenous integration, or novel electric and photonic interconnect fabrics and advanced packaging; and high-performance energy-efficient devices, or novel materials, devices, and interconnect technologies to enable next-generation digital and analog applications.
The final center themes will be chosen by DARPA and the industry consortium partners based on proposal technical merit, relevance, and potential impact; the competitive JUMP 2.0 solicitation is open to all U.S. universities.
