The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, Md., has awarded its first funds for a research consortium focused on the development of new materials to enable novel computing and storage technologies. NEW LIMITS stands for NEW materials for LogIc, Memory, and InTerconnectS. Its purpose is to create innovative solutions that will allow U.S. semiconductor producers to remain on the cutting edge.
The health of the U.S. semiconductor industry is vital not only to our economy, but also to our national security as we face 21st century threats,” says Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross
The work will be led by researchers at Purdue University, with teams from the University of Texas at Dallas, Penn State University, the University of Michigan and Stanford University. It is funded through the Nanoelectronics Computing research consortium, established in 2017 by NIST and SRCco, a not-for-profit subsidiary of the Semiconductor Research Corporation. NIST awarded SRCco $2.5 million to launch the consortium in support of basic research in future computing and information processing.
The consortium explores new approaches to low-energy devices and technologies that can outperform traditional CMOS (complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor) technologies. Its members, all of which have U.S. operations, are Analog Devices Inc., ARM Limited, EMD Performance Materials, IBM Corp., Intel Corp., Micron Technology Inc., Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., Raytheon Company, Samsung Electronics Company Ltd. and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. nCORE helps guide university research by focusing on the long-term future computing research needs of the semiconductor industry.
