Researchers can now get hands-on experience with the physical version of chips.
Termed the “University Shuttle Program”, Intel now provides public and educational institutions access to “modern technology for their classes, training and talent development,” said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, during a recent keynote session.
This program was shortly launched after the US CHIPS and Science Act, with an aim to boost semiconductor research and design. However, the company has not revealed many details regarding the operation and funding of the program. Intel has not commented on the cost of the chips made at Intel foundries.
This program alleviates the problem, for smaller chip companies whose limited budget could not secure manufacturing during chip shortage; unlike designers such as Apple and Nvidia paved their way into manufacturing fabs at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
The program is said to be part of the company’s $1 billion effort to fund startups and researchers to promote chip design, as the company also supports Arm, RISC-V and x86 architectures in its manufacturing nodes. A bunch of small orders can be manufactured as a single batch at Intel’s fabs.
Gelsinger added, “We want to build that talent pipeline for the future. And we’re going to work with these institutions to radically increase the semiconductor talent flow of tomorrow.”
Intel also has various shuttle programs(like OpenMPW) that boost research and talent. Intel provides a process design kit to optimize chip designs for specific processes. It is also opening up its 16nm “Intel 16” process to third parties, and that’s more advanced than the 90nm and 130nm nodes offered in Google’s OpenMPW program. These programs align with the US government’s policy of nurturing talent.
“We’re trying to encourage all the professors in universities to collaborate together on research but also build the very best IP,” said Bob Brennan, vice president and general manager for Intel Foundry Services Customer Solutions Engineering.
