“This is an exciting moment for those of us who love chips,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo in a recent welcome video on the chips.gov website. “Here at the Commerce Department, we are making a historic investment to supercharge our domestic semiconductor industry.”
The recently signed CHIPS and Science Act includes a $39 billion manufacturing incentive program, and another $11 billion of R&D incentive to fund the National Semiconductor Technology Center, a National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, up to three new Manufacturing USA Institutes, and NIST metrology research and development programs.
“The thing about the CHIPS for America vision is that it’s very big,” said Donna Dubinsky, senior counselor to the secretary for CHIP’s implementation. “It’s trying to accomplish a lot of things at once.”
One is economic security. “We’re moving from an obsessive focus on absolute efficiency in the supply chain to more of a focus on resiliency in the supply chain,” she said. “That is a lot what this act is attempting to accomplish.”
Second is national security. “None of the most leading edge chips in the world are made in the U.S. today,” Dubinsky said. “We’re going to change that with this act. We need to be able to build the most sophisticated chips.”
Third is manufacturing experience. “We have to have the manufacturing of these chips as well as the design of these chips here,” she said, acknowledging that new industries will likely be born on the back of the domestic chip industry.
“With this funding, we’re going to make sure that the U.S. is never in a position where our national security interests are compromised, or where key industries are immobilized due to our inability to produce essential semiconductors right here at home,” Raimondo said.
“This is one of the biggest, boldest projects America has undertaken in the last 80 years,” Raimondo added. “We’ll need a collective approach that brings diverse stakeholders to the table, including state and local governments, industry, labor, education and research institutions, advocates, and U.S. partners and allies.”
Dubinsky said it’s time to restart the innovation flywheel. “In the past, in this country, we’ve had a tremendous intersection of academia, companies, investors that has created a flywheel of innovation, generated [an] enormous [number of] products, enormous prosperity and good paying jobs,” she said. “What we plan to do with these CHIPS dollars is to restart that flywheel.”
In our October issue, you’ll find several articles that examine the CHIPS Act funding and initiatives, as well as Europe’s own version of the CHIPS Act.
See Key Initiatives of the CHIPS and Science Act for an excerpt of the full A Strategy for the CHIPS for America Fund posted on the chips.gov website.
In the Chips Act Incentives: “Additional Considerations” article, Sree Ramaswamy, Senior Policy Advisor to US Secretary of Commerce, details the “additional considerations” that will be used to determine which applicants receive funding through the CHIPS Act.
Genpact’s Manoranjan (Monty) Mohanty and John Waite discuss supply chain issues, — noting that organizations must be ready to act once the funding and bidding opportunities for valuable contracts start to flow — in the article The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022: U.S. Semiconductor Industry Must Act Now to Seize Opportunities.
In the What the CHIPS and Science Act Could Mean for Domestic Semiconductor Manufacturing Industry Observation, Perforce’s Simon Butler makes an argument that it’s time to switch to a chiplet-based design flow.
Europe is working on its own version of the CHIPS Act. Read an analysis in How Europe Aims to Achieve Strategic Autonomy for Semiconductors.
Speaking of Europe, we’re heading to Semicon Europa in November where we will be distributing our October issue, and also working on a show daily e-newsletter. It’s going to be a great show, co-located with Electronica. I hope to see you there.
I’m excited that the CHIPS and Science Act was passed, and how it’s encouraged the return of semiconductor manufacturing to the US. We’ll be doing our best to keep the momentum going. Check out our plans in the new 2023 Editorial Guide and Media Planner at www.semiconductor-digest.com/advertise.