Bringing commercial innovations in chip design to national security
Semiconductors and microelectronics are some of the most important components in building cutting-edge capabilities for our national security and defense technologies, from satellites and radar to vehicles and communications equipment. Ensuring these components are developed with the utmost regard for security is a critical, yet challenging task. Historically, the security requirements associated with developing microelectronics have limited the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD) ability to leverage the latest innovations.
Through a recent DoD-sponsored project, Rapid Assured Microelectronics Prototypes (RAMP) using Advanced Commercial Capabilities, the goal is to leverage commercial best practices to help accelerate the development process and bring reliable, secure state-of-the-art microelectronic design and manufacturing to national security and defense applications. The DoD recently announced it has selected Microsoft to support the second phase of this project.
This project builds on a 40-year history of collaboration between Microsoft and the U.S. DoD, to bring commercial innovation to the national security community. Microsoft previously led a coalition of partners in collaborating with the DoD on the first phase of this initiative: to develop design capabilities that achieve the department’s mission priorities. In this second phase, Microsoft and our partners will build on these successful designs and begin to develop custom integrated chips and System on a Chip (SoC) designs using a secure, collaborative design flow that provides access to advanced manufacturing processes. These new designs will achieve lower power consumption, improved performance, reduced physical size, and improved reliability for application in DoD systems.
Microsoft has engaged microelectronics industry leaders across the commercial and defense industrial base (DIB) to develop this phase of the RAMP project, collaborators include Ansys, Applied Materials, Inc., BAE Systems, Battelle Memorial Institute, Cadence Design Systems, Cliosoft, Inc., Flex Logix, GlobalFoundries, Intel Federal, Raytheon Intelligence and Space, Siemens EDA, Synopsys, Inc., Tortuga Logic, and Zero ASIC Corporation.
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