Jane Edwards
Intel’s foundry business will further advance the development and testing of chip tape-outs and prototypes under the third phase of the Department of Defense’s Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes-Commercial program.
DOD awarded the RAMP-C program’s Phase 3 through the Strategic and Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems other transaction authority agreement, also known as S2MARTS OTA, with the National Security Technology Accelerator, Intel said Monday.
Under Phase 3, defense industrial base and commercial customers will design and manufacture product prototypes using Intel 18A process technology, intellectual property and other tools.
In 2021, Intel was selected to build a commercial foundry infrastructure under the first phase of the RAMP-C program.
In July 2023, Intel Foundry added Boeing and Northrop Grumman to the second phase of DOD’s commercial chip fabrication initiative, enabling the two defense contractors to join other RAMP-C customers in building and producing test chips for product design tape-outs using Intel 18A and other technologies.
Dev Shenoy, principal director for microelectronics within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, said Intel Foundry has met the metrics and milestones of the RAMP-C project’s second phase and has secured funding to begin work on the program’s third phase.
“RAMP-C intends to demonstrate prototype production of Intel 18A chips in 2025 to deliver unprecedented processing performance for the DoD,” Shenoy added.
