Google has signed a cooperative research and development pact with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop and produce chips that researchers can use for new nanotechnology and semiconductor devices, the US Commerce Department said on Tuesday.    

"Google will pay the initial cost of setting up production and will subsidize the first production run," the Commerce Department said in a statement.    

NIST, a unit of the department, will utilize university research partners to design circuitry for the chips to be manufactured at the Bloomington, Minnesota semiconductor foundry of SkyWater Technology.  

The Commerce Department acknowledged that large companies that design and manufacture semiconductors often had ready access to these types of chips.    

"But the cost can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, presenting a major hurdle to innovation by university and startup researchers," it said. "By increasing production to achieve economies of scale and by implementing a legal framework that eliminates licensing fees, the collaboration is expected to bring the cost of these chips down dramatically.    

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The 200mm wafer to be developed under the Google-NIST collaboration is an industry-standard format compatible with the manufacturing robots at most semiconductor foundries. Giving researchers access to chips in this format will allow them to prototype designs and emerging technologies that, if successful, can be integrated into production more quickly, thus speeding the transfer of technology from the lab to market.    

"The circuit designs will be open source, allowing academic and small business researchers to use the chips without restriction or licensing fees," the statement added.

NIST said it anticipates designing as many as 40 different chips optimized for different applications. Because the chip designs will be open source, researchers will be able to pursue new ideas without restriction and share data and device designs freely.    

"By creating a new and affordable domestic supply of chips for research and development, this collaboration aims to unleash the innovative potential of researchers and startups across the nation," NIST Director and Commerce Under Secretary for Standards and Technology Laurie E. Locascio said.

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Modern microelectronic devices are made of components that are stacked like layers in a cake, with the bottom layer being a semiconductor chip. The NIST/Google collaboration will make available a bottom-layer chip with specialized structures for measuring and testing the performance of the components placed on top of it, including new kinds of memory devices, nanosensors, bioelectronics, and advanced devices needed for artificial intelligence and quantum computing.    

Research partners contributing to the chip designs include the University of Michigan, the University of Maryland, George Washington University, Brown University, and Carnegie Mellon University.

NIST and @Google signed an agreement to develop and produce chips needed in the semiconductor and nanotechnology industries.

Get the details: https://t.co/29I2Cu0i26 pic.twitter.com/gk6SQybrCS

— National Institute of Standards and Technology (@NIST) September 13, 2022

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This comes as the latest developments within the framework of decrees related to technological and scientific innovation.

As technological innovation constitutes the driving force of US military hegemony, the White House has recently signed several decrees to challenge China over the production of semiconductors and to provoke it in response to its ongoing ties with Russia.

The most prominent one is undoubtedly the CHIPS act which commits a total of $280bn to hi-tech manufacturing and research and is designed to increase the US’s competitiveness with China.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington said Beijing "firmly opposed" the bill as it strikes as a "Cold War mentality."

Due to the global microchip shortage, the US economy lost last year $240 billion, and a war over Taiwan would be even more catastrophic for the US due to its reliance on one single supplier, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

The US crackdown on the sale of technology to China has already begun to have an impact, with the US chip designer Nvidia disclosing last week that it had been told by US officials to stop exporting two top computing chips for artificial intelligence work to China.

The latest updates reveal that selected companies that receive funding from the initiative are prohibited from building facilities in China.

On Monday, The White House published a statement announcing the signing of an executive order to launch a national biotechnology and biomanufacturing initiative by US President Joe Biden.

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