President Joe Biden’s administration is trying to fund efforts to improve semiconductor manufacturing using digital twins.
Digital twins are virtual models used to test and optimize physical objects and systems. For example, car manufacturers are trying to use digital twins of their factories to experiment with new production processes without disrupting production.
The Biden administration announced it will accept applications for a total of $285 million in funding for work that includes research to develop digital twin semiconductors, build and support combined physical/digital facilities, industrial demonstration projects, training and workforce operations. what he says will be a new CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute.
During a press briefing Sunday, Commerce Undersecretary for Standards and Technology and Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Laurie E. Locascio said digital twins could lower chip development and manufacturing costs while enabling more collaborative processes around chip design and development.
“At present, no country has invested at the scale needed or successfully integrated the industry to unlock the enormous potential of digital twin technology for breakthrough discoveries,” said Locascio.
That funding is part of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, a $280 billion bill that included $52.7 billion to increase domestic semiconductor manufacturing. At the time, President Biden noted that the United States had gone from producing 40 percent of the world’s semiconductors to less than 10 percent.
Echoing another important theme in the rhetoric of administrationAssistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Arati Prabhakar, said Sunday that when the CHIPS Act was passed, semiconductor manufacturing had become “dangerously concentrated in just one part of the world” (probably referring to China).
Will be an informative webinar on applications on May 8. Organizations that can apply include nonprofits, universities, governments, and for-profit corporations that are “domestic entities” (incorporated in the United States, with their principal place of business here).
