The semiconductor shortage during the pandemic opened the public’s eyes to the fact that those tiny chips are critical to worldwide infrastructure from cars to computers to cell phones.
President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022 to strengthen the global supply chain of semiconductors and microelectronics — and to boost domestic production.
The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa will receive $2 million, part of a $238 million national initiative, to join the California-Pacific-Northwest AI Hardware Microelectronics Commons Hub.
UH electrical and computer engineering professors Jeff Weldon and Boris Murmann will use the funds to boost education and design opportunities here in Hawaiʻi.
“More and more of the production has moved offshore, and it’s just reached a point where we need to bring some of it back for reasons of national security,” Murmann said.
He said there’s a trend at universities nationwide to offer more semiconductor courses and better prepare students for the industry.
Weldon emphasized that there is a disconnect between what is researched at the university level and what is produced at the industrial level.
“The companies have to invest a lot of money into this, and so taking a design that a student does, or at the university level, try to port that into an industrial chip, it’s really difficult and time-consuming and costly,” Weldon said.
To smooth out that transition for college students, Weldon plans to set up a summer internship program to teach semiconductor fabrication and testing skills.
Also as part of the overall program, Murmann will focus on guiding students through the design process.
“They go through the logistics of it, the design of it, and they see if this is fun and if this is a career for them, and if they like it, they can move on, and maybe in graduate school or later undergraduate courses, pursue this more deeply,” Murmann said.
While Hawaiʻi is unlikely to become a semiconductor manufacturing hub, Weldon said the design work can be done anywhere.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Aug. 29, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
