US government officially pays $285 million for the creation of virtual clones

The U.S. government is on a quest to reduce the strain on the microchip fabrication industry, which has progressively become more important with the rise of artificial intelligence-powered systems.

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The Biden Administration is committed to bringing chip manufacturing back to the United States, and under the multi-billion CHIPS Act, applications have been opened for $285 million in funding to develop "digital twins". Digital twins are advanced software models of hardware that can be used by engineers to identify key problems in the design of a piece of hardware. In this case, to receive funding an institute would have to create a digital twin of microchips.

The result of having a digital twin for hardware means engineers can make changes to the design of a chip before its even manufactured, speeding up the overall time it takes to design new silicone-based hardware. These virtual clones of pieces of hardware have been used in the past by the auto industry and the Space Force for satellite simulations.

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"Digital twin-based research can also leverage emerging technology like artificial intelligence to help accelerate the design of new U.S. chip development and manufacturing concepts and significantly reduce costs by improving capacity planning, production optimization, facility upgrades, and real-time process adjustments," says the Department of Commerce

Notably, the CHIPS Act is a $39 billion funding pool dedicated to bringing semiconductor manufacturing to the United States, which, if achieved, will result in tighter national security, the U.S. economy being impacted less by supply chain shortages, and assistance in the global race to develop the first artificial general intelligence.