Biden administration plans $285 million in CHIPS Act funding for digital twins

President Joe Biden’s administration is seeking to fund efforts to leverage digital twins to improve semiconductor manufacturing.

Digital twins are virtual models used to test and optimize physical objects and systems. For example, automakers are considering using digital twins of their factories to experiment with new manufacturing processes without disrupting production.

The Biden administration has applied for funding expected to total $285 million for projects including semiconductor digital twin development research, physical/digital complex construction and support, industry demonstration projects, workforce training, and operations. announced that they would accept it. Among them, the new CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute will be established.

Laurie E. LoCascio, Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said at a press conference on Sunday that digital twins can reduce the cost of chip development and manufacturing while also increasing collaboration on chip design and development. He said that it has the potential to enable a similar process.

“Currently, no country has invested or successfully integrated the industry at the scale necessary to unlock the enormous potential of digital twin technology to lead to breakthrough discoveries,” Locascio said.

The funding is part of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, a $280 billion bill that includes $52.7 billion to increase domestic semiconductor manufacturing. At the time, President Biden noted that the United States had gone from producing 40% of the world’s semiconductors to less than 10%.

Reflecting another major theme regime rhetoricArati Prabhakar, the presidential adviser for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said on Sunday that when the CHIPS Act was passed, semiconductor manufacturing was “dangerously concentrated in some parts of the world.” (Probably referring to China).

there will be information webinar Organizations that can apply include nonprofit organizations, universities, governments, and for-profit businesses that are “domestic corporations” (those incorporated and principally located in the United States).