Jane Edwards
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has collaborated with the Semiconductor Research Corp. and a consortium of defense and semiconductor companies to launch the second iteration of the Joint University Microelectronics Program.
JUMP 2.0 will support research that addresses new and emerging challenges facing microelectronics and other information and communications technologies as outlined in the Decadal Plan for Semiconductors, DARPA said Wednesday.
These challenges include security vulnerabilities in highly interconnected artificial intelligence systems, rising demand for memory and data storage and need for advancements in analog hardware.
JUMP 2.0 intends to create seven research centers to address the identified challenges, advance innovation and support and transition exploratory research to commercial and defense opportunities.
SRC is seeking proposals from research institutes and universities for seven research center themes: cognition; communications and connectivity; intelligent sensing to action; systems and architectures for distributed compute; intelligent memory and storage; advanced monolithic and heterogenous integration; and high-performance energy efficient devices.
DARPA, SRC and the consortium will hold a proposers’ day workshop on Jan. 25 and accept white papers through March 7.
University teams that submitted the selected white papers will be asked to send full center proposals through June 22. The selection of proposals for award is expected to occur on Aug. 23. DARPA and the consortium expect JUMP 2.0 centers to launch by January 2023.
