The Lab Innovation Networking Center (LINC), established in 2020, is a collaboration initiative of four powerhouse DOE national laboratories in the Bay Area: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories.
LINC’s goal: to accelerate industry connections and collaborations with the labs and to help improve products, start new companies, and drive industry innovation.
Following its successful virtual webinars in January, titled “Open the Door to Innovation,” and in April, titled “Open the Door to Partnerships,” LINC held another virtual industry event on August 25, this time specifically for the semiconductor sector, titled “Over the Horizon: Finding the Future of Semiconductors.”
The event was well attended, by more than 90 participants, including 77 representatives from semiconductor companies such as ARM, Ford Motor Company, Nissan, Samsung, HPE, Lockheed Martin, and IBM, as well as many startups.
The first half of the event featured a technology “quick pitch” showcase, which included two pitches presented by Peter Nugent, on HPC-enabled physical modeling of microelectronic devices (principal investigators: Zhi Jackie Yao, Revathi Jambunathan, Andy Nonaka) and complex energy device HPC simulations (principal investigator: Dan Martin).
The pitch session was followed by an in-depth panel discussion about the future of semiconductors with industry and lab experts: Berkeley Lab’s Ramamoorthy Ramesh, Dan Armbrust from Silicon Catalyst and co-lead of the Beyond Moore’s Law initiative at Berkeley Lab, Rick McCormick from Sandia National Laboratories, and Jeff Welser from IBM Research Labs.
Ramesh noted the importance of fundamental and translational research in the semiconductor and microelectronics space. “Energy efficiency will be a critical issue to address as microelectronics continues its exponential growth and takes up a more significant share of our primary energy use,” he said. “The market will be huge, to the tune of $2-4 trillion in the next 10 years, and critically important to our national security.”
As the market and society’s need for chip innovation grows, the labs that make up LINC are accelerating their research and technology contributions, and LINC will help connect industry and Bay Area national research labs. In fact, following the event, more than a dozen companies that attended the event have already contacted LINC for more information about the labs’ capabilities in semiconductor research.
Watch a recording of the event.
For more information on LINC’s future activities, contact Todd Pray, Berkeley Lab’s Chief Strategic Partnerships Officer, who leads the Lab’s participation in LINC.