DARPA’s Electronics Resurgence Initiative is taking today’s highest-tech to new heights
Jun 8, 2021
In this episode of the Voices form DARPA podcast, listeners get a status report on DARPA’s ambitious and expansive Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI) as they learn about the many touchpoints that DARPA and the microelectronics sector have shared over the past half-century. Also in the podcast is a preview of a follow-on effort, ERI 2.0, which is designed to accelerate the transition of foundational research and development into prototyping, manufacturing, and delivery of next-generation microelectronics technologies.
The voices in this episode include those of:
- Mark Rosker, director of the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO)
- John Neuffer, CEO of the Semiconductor Industry Association
- Jim Libous, Chief Engineer for Advanced Electronics Strategy for Lockheed Martin
In 2017, DARPA unveiled ERI. An ambitious five-year, $1.5 billion, multi-program framework, ERI and its hundreds of research performers since then have been laying down the new foundations it will take for the microelectronics sector to perpetuate its more than 60-year sprint of delivering increasingly capable technology.
ERI came to be because business as usual in the microelectronics sector is no longer an option. This is due to technical and economic trends that threaten to end the validity of Moore’s Law, the iconic principle of exponential advance in integrated circuitry first articulated in 1965 by microelectronics elder Gordon Moore. Those same trends threaten to erode U.S. predominance in current and emerging, microelectronics-dependent high technologies, such as artificial intelligence and autonomous operations, which are becoming pivotal to national security and military success.
One of the troublesome trends is the relentless increase in the cost and complexity of advanced microelectronics design and manufacture. Meanwhile, the electronics innovation engine has been shifting overseas and cost-driven foundry consolidation has limited the Department of Defense’s access to leading-edge microelectronics. At the same time, high-profile challenges to the nation’s digital backbone have been highlighting the long-ignored centrality of electronics security. The program managers and researchers in government, industry, and academic laboratories who are collaborating on ERI, aim to address all of these concerns as they strive to maintain the rapid pace of world-changing progress that the electronics sector has delivered for the past six decades.
Listeners can access the podcast from the Voices from DARPA page on the agency’s web site or directly from these locations: