The Pentagon has awarded nearly $240 million in deals to establish eight regional hubs across the country that will work on bolstering microelectronics innovation.
The contracts for the “Microelectronics Commons” program are the department’s first awarded under the CHIPS and Science Act
signed into law last year to help address semiconductor shortage challenges and ensure the department has domestic production access to the microelectronics required for major capabilities.
“The microelectronics commons is focused on bridging and accelerating the lab-to-fab transition, that infamous valley of death between research and development and production. Because while America is a world leader in the innovative research and design of microelectronics, we’ve lagged in the ability to prototype, manufacture and produce them at scale. That’s what the CHIPS Act is meant to supercharge,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told reporters on Wednesday. “[This is] part of how DoD is reducing its reliance on foreign components, keeping us safe from the risks of supply chain disruption.”
Hicks noted the department received over 80 proposals since last December to participate in the Microelectronics Common effort, before deciding on the eight hubs and awarding each between $15 million-$40 million to begin establishing innovation ecosystems.
“They’ll focus on areas like electromagnetic warfare, secure computing at the tactical edge and the Internet of Things, AI hardware, 5G and 6G wireless, quantum and other leap-ahead technologies, all to meet DoD’s needs and many with dual-use applications,” Hicks said. “We help to direct investment like we do anywhere else we put government R&D [funds]. That’s what we’re going to be able to do here is to drive, with our dollars, the specific investment areas we need.”
The eight regional hubs, each comprised of between seven to 130 member organizations, include the Northeast Microelectronics Coalition Hub in Massachusetts led by MassTech, the Silicon Crossroads Microelectronics Commons Hub in Indiana led by the Applied Research Institute, the California Defense Ready Electronics and Microdevices Superhub led by the University of Southern California, the Commercial Leap Ahead for Wide Bandgap Semiconductors Hub in North Carolina led by North Carolina State University, the Southwest Advanced Prototyping Hub in Arizona led by Arizona State University, the Midwest Microelectronics Consortium (MMEC) Hub in Ohio led by the MMEC, the Northeast Regional Defense Technology Hub in New York led by the Research Foundation for the State University of New York and the California-Pacific-Northwest AI Hardware Hub led by Stanford University.
“Think of the hubs as part of an ecosystem, and at the end of that ecosystem are fabs and the fabs are actually the ones that end up producing. We have fabs elsewhere in the world. We will still have those, allied-based fabs, if you will. But what we’re doing here is generating a lot more ingenuity in that fab process in the United States and gearing it up through these hubs with a lot of energy on the types of microelectronics [and] on the types of problem sets that we need those fabs to produce at the other end. And then, yes, we will be purchasing what is produced out of U.S. fabs alongside, again, some that are located in allied countries,” Hicks said.
David Honey, deputy under secretary of defense for research and engineering, told reporters the department sees the regional hubs’ work having “high potential for purely commercial purposes as well.”
The Pentagon will be calling for the first Microelectronics Commons project solicitations “very soon,” according to Honey, who added the department is planning to detail additional projects in the third quarter of each upcoming fiscal year.
Hicks noted that organizations not selected for these initial awards will still have the chance to compete for “hundreds of millions of dollars in opportunities” over the next few years.
President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law in August 2022, with Hicks adding the Microelectronics Commons program is set to receive $2 billion in funding from FY ‘23 to ‘27.
DoD will host the Microelectronics Commons annual meeting next month, “where we’ll hear directly from the hubs as they present their capabilities and from government officials on defense priorities,” Hicks said.