DARPA to brief industry on initiatives in trusted computing, secure chip use, semiconductor manufacturing

Dec. 6, 2018
ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military researchers will brief industry later this month on a new initiative to help develop secure integrated circuit technology for trusted computing applications, ranging from manufacturing to systems integration.
ARLINGTON, Va. – U.S. military researchers will brief industry later this month on a new initiative to help develop secure integrated circuit technology for trusted computing applications, ranging from manufacturing to systems integration.

Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., will conduct industry briefings on the upcoming Electronics Resurgence Initiative: Defense Applications (ERI:DA) project from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on 19 Dec. 2018 at the Hilton Arlington, 950 North Stafford St., in Arlington, Va.

ERI:DA is one of several potential broad agency announcements under the recently announced second phase of the DARPA Electronics Resurgence Initiative. Goals of the briefings are to introduce industry to the ERI Phase II defense applications; and provide an overview of current ERI programs.

The ERI-DA project seeks to develop revolutionary national defense capabilities that capitalize on technologies developed in existing ERI thrusts -- namely, the need to support domestic secure chip manufacturing; invest in chip security; and demonstrate new ERI technologies for defense applications.

Related: Air Force to kick off trusted computing program to give military access to COTS microelectronics

DARPA officials say they want to promote teaming arrangements between organizations able to move electronics innovations into national defense hardware. The unclassified briefings will include overview presentations by government personnel and opportunities for team building.

The ERI Phase II will build on existing ERI programs to help support domestic semiconductor manufacturing processes that can help defense electronics systems integrators implement specialized circuits.

Further, this effort aims to ensure that those electronic circuits can be trusted through the supply chain and are built with security in mind, making certain that technological advances ultimately are applied to national security.

DARPA researchers are looking for ways to apply advanced electronics to machine autonomy and artificial intelligence; large-scale emulation; cyber security; space applications; cognitive electronic warfare; and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).

Related: Establishing a trusted supply chain for embedded computing design

Eligible ERI programs could include Common Heterogeneous Integration and Intellectual Property Reuse Strategies (CHIPS); Three Dimensional Monolithic System-on-a-Chip (3DSoC); Foundations Required for Novel Compute (FRANC); Software Defined Hardware (SDH); Domain-specific System on Chip (DSSoC); Intelligent Design of Electronic Assets (IDEA); Posh Open Source Hardware (POSH); and the Joint University Microelectronics Program (JUMP).

DARPA announced the Electronic Resurgence Initiative's first phase in June 2017, which has spent upwards of $1.5 billion to advance microelectronics performance beyond the limits of traditional transistor scaling, and demonstrate the influence of this research on national defense. DARPA announced competitive awards for the first group of six new ERI programs in July 2018.

Companies interested in attending should register online no later than 1 p.m. easter time on 17 Dec. 2018 at https://www.cvent.com/events/electronics-resurgence-initiative-defense-applications-eri-da-/registration-dd64f9a4276c4a15a5b00e689aa02e2c.aspx?fqp=true. Additional information is online at http://www.cvent.com/d/nbqvx9.

Email questions or concerns to [email protected] More information is online at https://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/DARPA-SN-19-15/listing.html.

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