BINGHAMTON — Durham, North Carolina–based Semiconductor Research Corp. recently selected a team of researchers from both Binghamton University and Purdue University to lead a new multimillion-dollar research center. The Center for Heterogeneous Integration Research in Packaging, or CHIRP, will help to “define the future of electronics packaging in the United States and globally for the […]
BINGHAMTON — Durham, North Carolina–based Semiconductor Research Corp. recently selected a team of researchers from both Binghamton University and Purdue University to lead a new multimillion-dollar research center.
The Center for Heterogeneous Integration Research in Packaging, or CHIRP, will help to “define the future of electronics packaging in the United States and globally for the next decade,” Binghamton University contended in a news release.
CHIRP will enable the Binghamton and Purdue researchers to expand their existing work, much of which has been federally funded, into products and applications.
Semiconductor Research Corp., a technology research consortium, promotes collaborations among universities, technology companies, and government agencies. It will provide $1.8 million to the center in the first four years. An additional $1.8 million will come from the campuses, the State University of New York, and other sources.
Binghamton and Purdue have a history of collaboration that stretches back nearly two decades. About one dozen faculty members in engineering and computer science at the two universities will participate in the center’s research. The center expects to expand in faculty participation as Semiconductor Research Corp. initiates additional projects.
Kwok Ng, senior director at Semiconductor Research, said he’s excited to partner with the Purdue-Binghamton team.
“They have a successful track record of working with the semiconductor industry,” he said. “CHIRP will capitalize on this heritage and will partner with [Semiconductor Research] to address industry needs.”
The founding members of Semiconductor Research Corp.’s CHIRP are United Kingdom–based ARM; Armonk, New York–based IBM (NYSE: IBM); Santa Clara, California–based Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC); Eindhoven, Netherlands–based NXP (NASDAQ: NXPI); Dallas, Texas–based Texas Instruments (NASDAQ: TXN); and Seoul, South Korea–based Samsung, which will guide the research at Binghamton and Purdue.
CHIRP’s work
In explaining the work that CHIRP will do, Binghamton University points to Moore’s Law, “the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years.” It held steady for 50 years, the school said.
However, due to increased integration, along the way, consumers became accustomed to steady reductions in the cost of computing. That trend cannot continue without some significant changes in thinking; transistors simply can’t get much smaller than they already are.
That’s where CHIRP comes in, the school noted.
Bahgat Sammakia, VP for research and a professor of mechanical engineering at Binghamton, developed the winning proposal with Kanad Ghose, professor of computer science at Binghamton, and Ganesh Subbarayan, professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue.
Sammakia and Subbarayan will serve as co-directors of the center, whose research will address issues in global interconnects, efficient power delivery, system design, thermal management, novel materials, reliability and other topics.
Heterogeneous integration of many microchips into single packages will be “essential” to technology ranging from cell phones to mainframe computers for at least the next decade, Sammakia said.
“Anywhere you have chips that benefit from small transistors, we’re heading toward heterogeneous integration,” he explained. “It’s really the only solution available for the next five to 10 years. There’s an increasing challenge to shrink transistors much further. Other approaches, like quantum computing, are at least a decade away.”
