The United States faces a labor shortage in semiconductor chip manufacturing, and even educating people about the existence of the field has proven difficult. In response, Apple and other companies have spent significant money and time closing the skills gap and closing pipeline breaks.

Apple launched the New Silicon Initiative, a series of grants to technology-focused universities across the country to train more skilled workers in chip design and manufacturing. The initiative funds education and training in microelectronic circuits and hardware design. Eight universities are participating, chosen for their knowledge of engineering and their commitment to developing courses for creating integrated circuits.

One of the participants is Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Arijit Raychowdhury, president of the ECE School, spoke to TechRepublic about how Apple’s support has changed the school’s offerings and students’ potential place in the changing field of engineering and computer chip manufacturing.

What is NSI at Georgia Tech?

In October, Georgia Tech celebrated the start of its participation in NSI, representing an expanded collaboration based on a successful tape-based course already offered at the university.

“We are excited to bring the New Silicon Initiative to Georgia Tech, expanding our relationship with its School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,” Jared Zerbe, director of hardware technologies at Apple, said in a statement. press release. “Integrated circuits power countless products and services in every aspect of our world today, and we can’t wait to see how Georgia Tech students help create and invent the future.”

The full partnership will begin in January 2025. Apple engineers will present lectures, review projects in multiple IC design courses, provide feedback to students, and participate in mentorships and networking events. Apple also funds teaching assistants. These mentors can answer students’ questions about what jobs will be available to them once they learn chip design skills.

One of the strengths of the program is that the tape course gives students the opportunity to not only design their own chip, but also build it and test it for bugs. This allows them to gain experience overhauling and troubleshooting under conditions similar to those encountered in the real world. Graduates of the courses in computer architecture, circuit design and hardware technology at ECE can become integrated circuit design engineers, chip design engineers, and analog designers.

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“There was huge interest among the students,” Raychowdhury said. “In the first semester, they designed a RISC-V microprocessor with some accelerators – and realized they were seniors. They are not graduate students. They are undergraduate students.

These designs were fabricated on TSMC’s 65-nanometer process node and returned to students. Then students could write test modules for their own chips.

“Apple ended up hiring a bunch of students from that first class,” Raychowdhury added.

Training a workforce for tomorrow’s economy

The success of the initial cassette course led Apple to become even more involved in coordinating with the school to meet its workforce needs. Raychowdhury said the school has similar deals with companies like Texas Instruments, GlobalFoundries and Absolics.

Otherwise, “it’s very difficult to find students with that kind of expertise” in chip design, he said.

When companies participate in the curriculum, part of what would normally be on-the-job training could be provided in the classroom. “This reduces the preparation time for students when they join one of these companies,” Raychowdhury added.

During this time, students will find that they are learning skills that lead directly to in-demand jobs.

They have the space to “figure out if this is something they’re really passionate about,” Raychowdhury said. “Even in this broad field of semiconductor jobs, what exactly are they interested in? Whether it’s design, factory work, packaging, etc.

Research projects explore cutting-edge uses of AI

One of the components that students build in the tape recording course is a RISC-V microprocessor with an accelerator. Designed to solve linear algebra problems faster, this accelerator could be students’ first step into the hot field of hardware design behind generative AI. Georgia Tech and Apple’s efforts are not focused on generative AI unless they pursue it as a more advanced research project.

“There are some advanced research topics – they are not yet covered in class – in which students are looking for ways to use AI, particularly language models, to design chips, including writing RTL,” Raychowdhury said. “It’s an area that’s growing in popularity.”

Professor Sung-Kyu Lim of Georgia Tech is working on using AI to accelerate back-end chip design processes, such as layout generation and routing, to reduce time to market. walk. Some graduate students have the opportunity to work collaboratively on this project.

Providing the resources needed to close the skills gap

At Georgia Tech, emerging engineers can work with technologies similar to the advanced manufacturing and processing tools they would use in daily life as a chip designer. Georgia Tech’s AI Maker Space, launched in collaboration with NVIDIA, gives students access to the H100 and H200 GPUs. This in turn gives them more processing power to solve difficult chip design problems.

Ultimately, the plan is to produce enough skilled workers to cross the skills gap. McKinsey found in 2024 that the number of people working in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing fell 43% from its peak in 2000. The country may need 88,000 semiconductor engineers. drivers by 2029, but only about 1,000 new technicians join the workforce each year.

As Raychowdhury explains: “We need many more engineers who can work in the manufacturing plant, in design and in testing. »