The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), a university-research consortium for semiconductors and related technologies, today announced a public-private partnership to support research and innovation in nanoelectronics, with a goal of developing a radical, yet practical, successor to the basic electronic building blocks in today's computers. Over the next year, NIST will contribute $2.76 million to the effort, which, when combined with funds from industry, will fund nearly $4 million for the first year of a planned five-year program.
The partnership will fund a variety of high-priority research projects identified by the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI), one of three research program entities of SRC that coordinates work in nanoelectronics among major universities across the country. Through the initiative, researchers will strive to replace the world's most commonly used electronic component, known as the Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor (CMOS FET), which has driven the world's computers for more than 30 years but may hit its technological limits in the next decade. NIST chose NRI as a partner to accelerate research in electronics that goes beyond CMOS though an open competition launched in May, 2007. The competition was part of a NIST-wide effort to explore new models of public-private partnerships for R&D investment to accelerate and promote innovation.
For more details, see NIST, SRC-NRI Enter Partnership to Drive Search for Next-Generation Computer Technology.
