SEMICON West Keynote: CHIPS Act Update

Remarks as prepared.

Thank you all so much for joining me this morning; I  can’t think of many better places to be than at SEMICON West, or a better time to be in the semiconductor industry. Let’s give a big round of applause to SEMI for hosting us this week, and a special thank you to Ajit and Joe for bringing together such a remarkable group.  

I’m Dr. Laurie Locascio, the under secretary of commerce for standards and technology, and the director of NIST. I’m so proud to be leading our CHIPS team from the Biden-Harris administration here at SEMICON as we implement this historic legislation.

It’s my second trip  to this event since I was appointed as NIST director — and believe me when I say it: I’m so thrilled to be here.

This year, I want to share with you where we’ve been — but more excitedly, where we are going and what announcements are on the horizon.

But let’s first look back a step. Four years ago, we gathered virtually as the world wrestled with the COVID-19 pandemic. This room needs no introduction to the challenges we faced there.

But even as the world recovered, in part thanks to our nation’s commitment to research and innovation …

Even as we saw families could gather safely once again, business reopened their doors, and teams returned to the workplace …

Our supply chains remained challenged, and a world of people who had never before considered the power of this industry suddenly contemplated —

What is a semiconductor chip?

Why doesn’t America have a steady and secure supply of them — to power my medical devices, to make sure my tractor can drive, and to protect my national security?

Why is a lack of chips driving up the cost of a used car by 30%?

For many of you, the semiconductor industry has been in your blood for decades; you’ve poured time and sweat into making this industry a national driver of innovation, and helping people across the globe gain access to new technologies that improve their lives.

But as so many of you told the Department of Commerce in clear terms: The status quo was bleak. Our 2021 industry survey showed some concerning trends:  

• Semiconductor demand was 17% higher than in 2019 — but the world wasn’t seeing commensurate supply increases.
• The median inventory of semiconductor products fell from 40 days in 2019 to less than 5 days in 2021 — with some key industries seeing even lower inventory levels.

And so as the world dealt with massive delays and price hikes, the Biden-Harris administration, working together with industry — including many of you in this room today — and Congress, got to work on what would become the CHIPS and Science Act.

Less than two short years ago, this bipartisan legislation brought together stakeholders from across the country around our twin pillars: protecting America’s economic and national security, and getting the best possible deal for American taxpayers.

And to address those generational issues, CHIPS for America put in place a world-class team — because we have been crystal clear: CHIPS for America could not be just any old government procurement program.

We knew had to build our domestic capacity to manufacture chips, and that had to do with a unique, purpose-driven approach.

We hired experts from the semiconductor industry,  financial services, policy and strategy, researchers and scientists, and so many more to stand this program up and implement it at full speed.

We’ve convened stakeholders from all corners of the ecosystem — big leading-edge firms, small businesses and suppliers, American-owned firms, labor unions, workforce stakeholders, institutions of higher education, Congress, governors and mayors, and so many more people with a vested interest in revitalizing the American semiconductor industry — and we did a lot of that in partnership with the organizations here today.

Specifically, I want to thank all of you in this room. We are very grateful for the tremendous level of engagement you’ve dedicated to this effort, and by the level of interest in this program. And while that means we are oversubscribed and will not be able to fund every worthy project under the current funding levels, we’re thrilled by the large number of the applications we've received, and by the quality and amount of work and energy we have seen across every part of this nation.

And we have successfully executed the largest piece  of this program in this very short amount of time: We’ve announced $30 billion in proposed direct funding and $25 billion in proposed loans so far — and we have dozens more announcements to go.

Our proposed grants will support 19 greenfield fabrication plants, which is equivalent to 131 and a half football fields worth of clean room space; and 665,000 metric tons of steel, which is equivalent to 11 Empire State Buildings.

This is truly a remarkable shift in U.S. capacity.  

The scale of our U.S. ecosystem is now unprecedented. The total public and private investment from the four leading-edge  companies will equal roughly $300 billion between now and the end of the decade — far and away the most investment in new production in the history of the U.S. semiconductor industry.

We now have a diversity of technology that we have not had in decades. With Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and Micron, we now have four of the five global leading-edge semiconductor manufacturers aggressively expanding on our shores, and the fifth one, SK Hynix, has just announced a nearly $4 billion investment in Indiana to bring an advanced packaging fab and an R&D facility. No other economy in the world has more than two of these companies producing leading-edge chips on its shores.  

And we are bringing the world’s most advanced technology to the U.S. as well.  Intel, TSMC, and Samsung will each produce its variation on “2 nanometer” technology, the most advanced node currently on a path to commercialization. Micron will produce the most advanced memory technologies in the world, including the high-bandwidth memory chips critical for AI.

These achievements are dramatically increasing our capacity. And we have much more on the horizon; two weeks ago we announced our first preliminary memorandum of terms with an American-owned supplier, and we plan to announce several more PMTs in the coming weeks and months that will support upstream suppliers.  

Prior to 2022 and the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, the U.S. produced 0% of the world’s leading-edge chips. But now, after these proposed investments, we’ve changed the global landscape: According to the Semiconductor Industry Association (a recent industry report), the U.S. is on pace to grow its share of global logic manufacturing to 28% by 2032 and America is on pace to capture 28% of total capital expenditures.  

This growth would not have happened without the CHIPS and Science Act and the dedicated teams we have working day and night to implement it.  And we put us on that path in less than two years' time.

And as we build capacity to manufacture, we know that we must also build our capability to invent and to innovate the next several generations of semiconductor technology.

Innovation, including in concert with our international partners, is essential to protecting technological leadership.

That is why the secretary has called on the United States to be the only country in the world where every company capable of producing leading-edge chips will not only have high-volume manufacturing presence and also a significant research and development presence.

That is why the CHIPS R&D Office is dedicated both to inventing and commercializing semiconductor technology in the United States and to promoting domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

This demands close coordination with industry and key stakeholders.  

The $11 billion that Congress and the administration provided for R&D is a significant federal commitment. CHIPS R&D is ensuring that every dollar, every new investment, every new organization, and every new piece of infrastructure is both industry-relevant  and purpose-built to meeting our collective missions —

1. To position the United States as a global leader for efficiently bringing chips from idea to market and 
2. To permanently revolutionize our manufacturing capability.

To do that, across each of our technical programs, my staff reads your roadmaps, we host and attend conferences, we hire industry professionals, and we collaborate on a wide range of issues. Your response and your support thus far have been monumental, and we appreciate your input, just as we do with other stakeholders across this work.

When the CHIPS R&D Office this year released not one, not two, but three Notices of Funding Opportunities — to support advanced packaging materials and substrates, to support Small Business Innovation Research, and to establish a new CHIPS Manufacturing USA Institute — you responded with hundreds of strong concept papers and applications.

You recognized and told us that digital twin technology is the future of manufacturing. But currently, no country has invested at the scale and scope needed to unlock the enormous potential of digital twin technology for our industry.  

Until now.

CHIPS for America will award approximately $285 million dollars in a CHIPS Manufacturing USA institute dedicated to digital twins for semiconductors — this will be the first Manufacturing USA institute launch by the Department of Commerce during the Biden-Harris administration.

You contributed to the development of our seven metrology grand challenges and responded to the call for small businesses to fast track the development and deployment of technologies needed to measure, monitor, predict, and ensure quality in manufacturing more complex, smaller, and multilayered devices.

Not too long from now, we can imagine a student pursuing a degree in engineering coming to CHIPS Manufacturing USA and testing a digital twin of a tool born from the metrology program — the interconnectedness is astounding and necessary. These are just two high-velocity examples of the critical work that has happened in less than two years.

And we are only picking up speed and ambition.

This administration has committed to making the U.S. a world leader in advanced packaging, which is so critical to the future of the semiconductor industry as we address more than Moore’s Law.  

Advanced packaging allows manufacturers to make improvements in all aspects of system performance and function, and to shorten time to market. It is also critical to our sustainability efforts given it can enable reduced physical footprints, lower power consumption, and potentially decrease costs.  

Our research and development efforts in advanced packaging will heavily focus on high-demand emerging applications like high-performance computing and low-power electronics, both needed for artificial intelligence to enable our continued leadership in AI.

It’s for those reasons that the first CHIPS for America R&D NOFO originated from the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, or NAPMP, was dedicated specifically to advancements in packaging materials and substrates.

The response was tremendous — we are currently in the midst of a rigorous merit review process and are excited to move towards award-making this fall.

With that effort underway, I am now excited to announce the NAPMP’s second major thrust. After my talk this morning, CHIPS for America is releasing a notice of intent to invest up to $1.6 billion in an open competition for new R&D activities to establish and accelerate domestic capacity for semiconductor advanced packaging.      

This funding will be directed towards five R&D areas already announced in our vision papers:   

•  Equipment, tools, processes, and process integration;
• Power delivery and thermal management;
• Connector technology, including photonics and radio frequency (RF); 
• Chiplet ecosystem; and
• Co-design/electronic design automation (EDA).

We have an ambitious agenda. It would be far easier for us to invest in any single one of these R&D areas, one at a time and over a period of several years, and hope that the whole is greater than sum of its parts.

But our nation and our critical emerging industries need faster results.

That is why we are asking this community to propose advanced packaging solutions that we can demonstrate in high-impact application areas of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence and low-power microelectronics.

Moreover, we will ask the community to propose prototypes designed to demonstrate and validate research advances in realistic packaging flows and to implement their research results in a future National Advanced Packaging Piloting Facility.

The technical requirements to build this ecosystem will be challenging. And they will require teams that demonstrate collaboration across the innovation, manufacturing, supply chain, and customer landscape, as well as across the industry, nonprofit, and academic sectors.

It will not be sufficient to have an idea. We need an idea that can be manufactured and integrated across the advanced packaging chain.

Modern engineering — much less modern manufacturing — is not a solo sport. And it will take a full range of expertise and capabilities to achieve the ambitious NAPMP objectives and to successfully strengthen U.S. advanced packaging innovation.

This is an incredibly exciting opportunity that will push our industry farther than we’ve ever gone before — together.

And as we discuss coordination across the community, we must discuss the role of the National Semiconductor Technology Center, the membership organization that will convene participants across industry, customers, suppliers, educational institutions, entrepreneurs, and investors to accelerate the pace of new innovations from idea to marketplace.    

The NSTC is vital to addressing critical gaps in the current ecosystem, offering unparalleled value to a diverse array of stakeholders across the semiconductor value chain. It will become a hub for the brightest minds to collaborate and solve the industry’s most challenging problems.

Members of the NSTC will gain unparalleled access to partners, an investment fund, and a wealth of additional resources and funding opportunities — and I hope to see you all join as members.

There are opportunities you can take advantage of now.

Over the past two weeks, NSTC has announced two separate funding opportunities, with upcoming proposal due dates.

First, Natcast — the independent NSTC operator — anticipates awarding up to $30 million across multiple projects to advance AI-based tools to improve design productivity for radio frequency integrated circuits.

AI is an untapped resource for use in the semiconductor design space and can shorten the time from identification of a problem to a fully working design.

Second, the NSTC Workforce Partner Alliance program will make up to 10 high-impact awards of between $500,000 and $2 million dollars to create or expand workforce initiatives addressing critical U.S. job and skill gaps across semiconductor design, manufacturing, and production.

This is part of our commitment to invest hundreds of millions in the NSTC’s workforce efforts, including the creation of a Workforce Center of Excellence.

But the NSTC isn’t just a funding organization. It is the gateway for members to access state-of-the-art facilities that will support and extend U.S. leadership in semiconductor research, design, engineering, advanced manufacturing, and workforce development.

That is why I am excited to announce that later this week, the Department of Commerce and Natcast will officially release the model and a process that will help bring this vision for the NSTC facilities to life.

Together, the CHIPS R&D programs will provide capabilities to innovate across the full semiconductor technology stack solidifying the U.S. as a leader in semiconductor innovation. We’re building a strong and vibrant community, ready to engage and invest in our country’s technological future.

Here is the bottom line across each of our efforts — from manufacturing incentives, to research funding, to workforce development efforts:

The United States must cultivate and build our competitive assets to protect and grow our technological leadership. But for too long, we have neglected some of those assets — especially our workforce.

Secretary Raimondo has regularly highlighted this critical component to our success — we can bring fabs to our shores, but if we don’t have the workers to operate and maintain them, this effort will all be for naught.

And on my trips across the country to announce our PMTs, I hear firsthand from workers and local leaders just how essential it is that we get workforce right — both now and in the future.

When I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I heard from a workforce ambassador who had an internship in manufacturing as she was trying to decide whether to continue to her community college program or drop out. Her experience in manufacturing excited her and allowed her to see her future there. She came back to her community college program and redoubled her efforts to graduate and secure a job in the semiconductor industry. And that experience quite literally changed her life. It gave her the opportunity to get a good-paying job that she could support her family on — and hope for a bright future in the industry for years to come.

And the timeline that she and others have talked to me about aligns with our long-term vision for CHIPS for America.

We are not simply aiming to make the most announcements that we can this year, and hope the pieces fall in line afterwards.

We are laser-focused on putting ourselves on a trajectory to fundamentally revitalize the domestic industry over the next 10 years.

If we can continue on our current track, I am confident that we’ll meet that mark and avoid the race to the bottom that can harm complex global industries like ours.

Ultimately: CHIPS for America’s two core components, the CHIPS Incentives and R&D, are interdependent and high-functioning, and bringing to the community the best that government has to offer our industry stakeholders.

  It is imperative that we continue to curate and grow a U.S. semiconductor ecosystem where fabs are receiving the latest technology from laboratories on-shore, and then bringing those innovations to market.

This success won’t come purely from the CHIPS & Science Act; it’ll also come from the graduate student in a college lab, as they experiment with new ways to push the leading edge forward even farther.

It’ll come from the female engineer who has a million new counterparts in the construction and manufacturing sectors.

It’ll come from the construction worker who knows they’ve got a full slate of jobs lined up for months and years to come — from building fabs to new supplier facilities.

And it’ll come from the everyday people who can get the technology they need to thrive — the grandparents who no longer have to go without the latest pacemaker; the kids who can get low-cost, high-quality tablets to ensure the world is their classroom; and the parents who are starting a small business to be part of our high-tech economy.

Thanks to President Biden’s leadership, CHIPS for America is proud to bring that innovation future to life — for today, and long into the future.

Thank you.