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GSRC to share $29 million in semiconductor
research funds
Berkeley’s Gigascale
Systems Research Center (GSRC) and four other U.S. university
research centers will receive at least $29 million per year for
the next three years. Intel CEO Craig Barrett described the funding
as the "most ambitious research effort to keep the American
semiconductor industry at the forefront of innovation."
The funding includes $19 million from the semiconductor industry
and $10 million in federal funds to support long-range semiconductor
research through MARCO, the Microelectronics Advanced Research
Corporation. Established in 1998, MARCO is an umbrella organization
designed to strengthen ties between industry and top academic
centers doing research in semiconductor integrated circuit design
and fabrication technologies.
Now under the direction of EECS professor Jan Rabaey, the GSRC
was one of two centers originally established to investigate the
areas of system design, integration, testing, and verification.
Other centers exist at Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, and MIT,
each with a different research focus. A new center at UCLA was
added last fall to focus on nanoscale materials.
"What’s unique about this project is that it facilitates
cross-university research," says Rabaey. "We are usually
working in a more competitive process, but here we are getting
together with researchers at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and other campuses
to share information and prepare publications. It has been working
beautifully."
Funding for the five centers translates into roughly $10 million
for the GSRC over the next three years to support the work of
32 researchers at 16 centers. This research, according to Rabaey,
will have an enormous impact in the next 10 to 15 years, as the
semiconductor industry reaches the limits of current design paradigms
and must come up with entirely new design solutions.
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