Folks' weighs in on semiconductor consortium

In an effort to bolster U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, Sandia National Laboratories joined the National Semiconductor Technology Center, a public-private consortium dedicated to semiconductor research and development. Sandia is the first national lab to do so. 

The U.S. once produced more than a third of the world's semiconductor microchips, but that number has greatly diminished. As the world increasingly relies on computers — and to maintain technological sovereignty — there have been efforts to revitalize U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. 

The next five years will bring more than $300 billion in investments in the chips sector in the U.S., from both private and public sectors, said ECE professor Liesl Folks in a recent interview with the Albuquerque Journal. 

“That’s really prompted a round of refocusing and reinvesting in onshore and near-shore manufacturing to ensure that our economy can’t be harmed directly by geopolitical actors’ actions,” said Folks, who is also the founding director of the University of Arizona's Center for Semiconductor Manufacturing. "Only time will tell how well we can simultaneously onshore some activity, make more resilient other parts of the ecosystem by having diversified sources for different components, without doing real harm to the U.S. economy.”