The Department of Commerce plans to launch a competition under the CHIPS for America program to fund research and development activities related to advanced semiconductor packaging and has issued a notice of intent, or NOI, for the effort.

Advanced packaging brings numerous benefits to semiconductor technologies, including improved system performance, a smaller physical footprint, lower power requirements and decreased costs, the Commerce Department said.

The competition is expected to result in multiple cooperative agreements worth $150 million each for a maximum total of $1.6 billion in funding.

Proposed R&D activities will have to line up with one or more of the following five research areas:

• Equipment, tools, processes and process integration
• Power delivery and thermal management
• Connector technology, including photonics and radio frequency
• Chiplets ecosystem
• Co-design / electronic design automation

The government intends to schedule a webinar to discuss further details regarding the NOI.