NSF Integrated Circuit Research,
Education and Workforce
Development Workshop Final
Report
1
Steering Committee
● Chair: Matthew Guthaus
● Christopher Batten
● Erik Brunvand
●
Pierre-Emmanuel Gaillardon
● David Harris
● Rajit Manohar
● James Stine
Executive Summary
As the pace of progress that has followed Moore’s law continues to diminish, it is critical that the
US support Integrated Circuit (IC or “chip”) education and research to maintain technological
innovation. Furthermore, US economic independence, security, and future international standing
rely on having on-shore IC design capabilities. New devices with disparate technologies,
improved design software toolchains and methodologies, and technologies to integrate
heterogeneous systems will be needed to advance IC design capabilities. This will require
rethinking both how we teach design to address the new complexity and how we inspire student
interest in a hardware systems career path. The main recommendation of this workshop is that
accessibility is the key issue. To this end, a National Chip Design Center (NCDC) should be
established to further research and education by partnering academics and industry to train our
future workforce. This should not be limited to R1 universities, but should also include R2,
community college, minority serving institutions (MSI), and K-12 institutions to have the broadest
effect. The NCDC should support the access, development, and maintenance of open design
tools, tool flows, design kits, design components, and educational materials. Open-source
options should be emphasized wherever possible to maximize accessibility. The NCDC should
also provide access and support for chip fabrication, packaging and testing for both research
and educational purposes.
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This material is based upon work supported by the NSF under Grant No. 2137629.
