Friday, April 27, 2007

South Koreans to fund UTD semiconductor research

The future of chips: smaller, faster... tastier?

By John P. Meyer

UTD will be joining Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley as a recipient of grant money from Seoul's Consortium of Semiconductor Advanced Research (COSAR), a South Korean group seeking to "revolutionize the semiconductor industry." (COSAR is mentioned in this informative overview of South Korean scientific initiatives, which emphasizes the high level of government participation.)

Dr. Bob Helms and Dr. Hobson Wildenthal trade memoranda of understanding with South Korea commerce ministry director Nam-Jeung Kim and COSAR director Hyeong Joon Kim. Hopefully, the $8 million check ended up in the correct binder.

Under the terms of the signed "memorandum of understanding," The Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at UTD will explore new materials and equipment for future-generation chips, with an eye toward making them (and this should come as no surprise to anyone) smaller, faster and more energy-efficient. (Why don't they just go ahead and design them to run on biodiesel, while they're at it?)

Meanwhile, out west on the fault line, Stanford folks will be examining the manufacturing process while Berkeley-ites are looking into improvable aspects of chip design.

The Brits are also involved in new materials chip research, but they seem to have become bogged down in bad science.

As the money flows in over the next four years, UTD will be exploring nano-electronics and nano-bio-info-fusion technology (a synthesis of the biological, physical and information sciences) utilizing the campus' existing infrastructure and facilities; David Moore in the UTD news office confirms that no new structures are involved in the terms of the agreement.

All things considered, it's good that the COSAR gents didn't award the $8 million to us here at PegNews, because we'd probably have worked on improving the design of these sort of chips, with a particular interest in making it more difficult for fellow journalists to pilfer them.

Related stories

• UTD nanotech research draws South Korean investment, industrial partners (March 3, 2008)

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• Colleges & Universities > University of Texas at Dallas
• Computers