A $3 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to the University of Chicago aims to accelerate the growth of domestic chip and semiconductor manufacturing.
The NSF ACE-3D Chip Design Hub, awarded as part of The NSF Chip Design Hub program, will be centered at the University of Chicago. The hub will be led by Farah Fahim, a CASE senior scientist at the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Microelectronics Division director at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
The award seeks to remove many of the challenges currently facing the sector in the U.S. It will support the expansion of domestic talent pipelines, chip design ecosystems and industrial innovation, all with the goal of spearheading the next generation of domestic semiconductor manufacturing.
UChicago and Fermilab staff scientists will collaborate on the UChicago-anchored ACE-3D.
“Here in the United States, we have very good chip design innovation, but it is not connected to the domestic manufacturing ecosystem,” Fahim said. “By giving academia access to advanced manufacturing resources, we can propel manufacturing efforts across the country.”
The initiative aims to revolutionize the design of vertically stacked chips, moving from the flat squares used in laptops and cellphones. The ACE-3D Hub will focus on driving this 3D chip development, growing a user community and deploying new advanced technologies—creating practical, real-world tools to link academia, national labs and industry nationwide.
Before, the needed manufacturing tools were disparate and hard to access.
But by combining tools into ready-to-go “design flows” and creating assembly design kits to show exactly how the complicated work is undertaken, Fahim hopes the country’s future workforce will find it easier to innovate in the domestic semiconductor space.
The curricula and design flows that are being developed will be shared by ACE-3D with other academic institutions nationwide through this NSF program.
Nadya Mason, dean of UChicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, noted that ACE-3D will serve as a national resource both to advance science and technology and also to develop and train a skilled workforce to bolster U.S. innovation and economic competitiveness in 3D chip design.
“With our unmatched collaborations between academia, industry and national labs, UChicago is the natural place to grow both lab innovations and workforce solutions for the chip industry,” said Mason, who also serves as the University’s interim vice president for Science, Innovation, and Partnerships.
“We are proud to be home to this new NSF center dedicated to spurring domestic semiconductor production.”
From help desks and design kits to tutorials and coursework, the goal is to remove the barriers between the undergrads, Ph.D. students, postdocs and professors designing chips and the U.S. manufacturers who will assemble them.
Jason Conrad, program director of the SHIELD USA research and development initiative, said his group is excited to see the formation of UChicago ACE-3D.
Led by Arizona State University in partnership with Deca Technologies, SHIELD USA was created in January to drive innovation in the domestic microchip packaging ecosystem. It focuses on expanding capacity for domestic advanced packaging to help regain U.S. leadership in microelectronics while strengthening national security.
“UChicago ACE-3D will fill critical gaps in knowledge and access to the latest electronic design automation tools and technologies that are essential for the U.S. innovation leadership and workforce development,” Conrad said.
“SHIELD USA looks forward to partnering with ACE-3D Hub to access and test our advanced organic substrates being developed as part of the [National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program] project.”
Industry partners also said this new chip design hub will fill a major need in the market.
Robert Patti, CEO of manufacturer NHanced Semiconductors based in Batavia, Illinois, said his team is “very excited” to work with the ACE-3D Hub at UChicago.
“The nation has a huge need for new talent that is trained to implement the next generation of semiconductor technologies,” Patti said. “We see the ACE 3D Hub as vital for U.S. competitiveness.”
Other industry leaders had similar thoughts.
Katy Crist, director of workforce development at the California-based Synopsys, said the initiative was much-needed.
"The National Chip Design Hub and this award play a pivotal role in meeting the urgent need for a skilled semiconductor design and manufacturing workforce, particularly in the rapidly evolving field," Crist said. “Investments like this are crucial to sustaining United States leadership in the dynamic semiconductor sector."
Co-principal investigators will include Northwestern University Prof. Seda Ogrenci, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Prof. Pavan Kumar Hanumolu, ASU Prof. Hongbin Yu, University of Minnesota Prof. Yu Cao and UCLA Prof. Puneet Gupta.
The NSF Chip Design Hub program was created in 2023 to fund up to two Chip Design Hub awards. Purdue University’s Chipshub also has been recently selected for funding by the NSF.
Fahim described the two projects as highly complementary, with the Purdue hub providing foundational tools and curricula for chip design and the UChicago hub connecting the academic research community to advanced next-gen manufacturing processes.
“Manufacturing will thrive because chip design training will be more accessible and research will thrive because there will be a community supporting this important effort,” Fahim said.
This story was originally published on the UChicago PME website.
