DARPA taps UT for $1.4B next generation semiconductor research and fabrication facility
It's one of the largest federal awards UT has ever received
https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/n...Pos=1#cxrecs_s
By Brent Wistrom – Editor, Austin Inno, Austin Business Journal
Jul 18, 2024
.....Austin's reputation as a hub for defense-related technology is about to get another badge of honor.
The Department of Defense's often secretive innovation wing, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA, has picked the University of Texas-led Texas Institute for Electronics for a major investment that will help establish a new semiconductor research and fabrication facility at two campuses in Austin.
The $840 million DARPA investment will help pay for a research and prototyping facility where industry, academia and government agencies will work on next generation chips used for satellite imaging, autonomous vehicles and other high tech tools and weapons. Those new innovations will also be used to improve the U.S. semiconductor industry.
Overall, it's a $1.4 billion project, and it represents one of the largest federal awards UT has ever received.
The first of the innovation labs will be at UT's Montopolis campus at 2706 Montopolis Dr. in Southeast Austin in a facility that used to house chip manufacturing for Skorpios Technologies Inc. and an R&D facility for Sematech. The other lab will be at the J. J. Pickle Research Campus in North Austin. Together, the spaces will have roughly 84,000 square feet of state of the art clean rooms, TIE's chief technology officer, S.V. Sreenivasan, said......