On Monday, President Obama announced the formation of a working group to examine methods for guarding and strengthening the U.S. semiconductor industry. It’s not clear the U.S. chip industry is in trouble but certainly efforts abroad are gaining steam. Notably China is focusing on developing its own chips – not least in response to export restrictions on select U.S. chips to China. Also, Fujitsu has announced its post K machine will be ARM-based. ARM is now owned by Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank.

The announcement from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) noted:

The semiconductor industry directly employs 250,000 workers, is the third largest source of U.S. manufactured exports, and has the highest level of investment in research and development (R&D) as a percentage of sales of any major industry. In addition, the semiconductor industry creates foundational technologies that enable innovation in virtually every sector of the U.S. economy. A loss of leadership in semiconductor innovation and manufacturing could have significant adverse impacts on the U.S. economy and even on national security.

No doubt Intel’s x86 architecture still dominates the PC-through-HPC landscape with GPUs playing an increasing role in accelerating many workloads. But alternatives are popping up. A wide variety of other chips already play critical roles in enabling the computer infrastructure writ large. It’s probably worth noting there are at least two distinct elements to being competitive including chip functionality and manufacturing process expertise.

The decline of Moore’s law and the pressure it puts on developing the next generation of computer technology were also cited as was the global supply environment. New public and private investments in R&D “are almost certain to be required if the past remarkable pace of improvements in price and performance of semiconductors and the benefits deriving therefrom are to continue.”

Further, this R&D should drive “future computer architectures and their integration into systems well beyond the traditional computing sphere, including automotive and other mobile applications.”

An interesting take on Moore’s law and semiconductor technology’s prospects was contained in the final International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) issued in July (see HPCWire article, Transistors Won’t Shrink Beyond 2021, Says Final ITRS Report). The highly-detailed multi-part report, collaboratively published by a group of international semiconductor experts, offers guidance on the technological challenges and opportunities for the semiconductor industry through 2030. One of the major takeaways is the insistence that Moore’s law will continue for some time even though traditional transistor scaling (through smaller feature sizes) is expected to hit an economic wall in 2021.

The time is right, according to the initiative, for a fresh look at the policy issues shaping innovation and global competition in the semiconductor industry, according to PCAST. Working group members span industry and academia (see below) and include heavy hitters. John Holdren, OSTP director, will co-chair the group along with Paul Otellini, past president and CEO of Intel. The full working group includes the following members:

• Richard Beyer (Former Chairman and CEO, Freescale Semiconductor)
• Wes Bush (Chairman, CEO, and President, Northrop Grumman)
• Diana Farrell (President and CEO, JP Morgan Chase Institute)
• John Hennessy (President Emeritus, Stanford University)
• Paul Jacobs (Executive Chairman, Qualcomm)
• Ajit Manocha (Former CEO, GlobalFoundries)
• Jami Miscik (Co-CEO and Vice Chairman, Kissinger Associates; Co- Chair, President’s Intelligence Advisory Board)
• Craig Mundie (President, Mundie and Associates; Former Senior Advisor, Microsoft; Member of PCAST)
• Mike Splinter (Former CEO and Chairman, Applied Materials)
• Laura Tyson (Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School, UC Berkeley; Former CEA Chair and NEC Director)

The new PCAST working group will identify the core challenges facing the semiconductor industry at home and abroad and identify major opportunities for sustaining U.S. leadership. Based on its findings, the working group will deliver a set of recommendations on initial actions the Federal government, industry, and academia could pursue to maintain U.S. leadership in this crucial domain.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), a lobbying group that represents the US semiconductor industry backed the new working group.

In a blog post, the trade group stated, “SIA welcomes this timely announcement, given new challenges facing the U.S. semiconductor industry, including unprecedented government investment programs from some countries and the increasing technological complexity involved in achieving new innovation breakthroughs. These developments have implications not only for the economy and society, but also national security.”

In Washington today, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker today gave a policy address highlighting the importance of the U.S. semiconductor industry. She zeroed in on the steps needed to ensure the US industry retains its leadership in the face of increased global competition.

“China’s effort to move up the value chain should be the result of healthy competition and free and fair trade, not state-directed investments aimed at distorting global markets,” said Pritzker, as quoted by SIA. “In addition, no government should require technology transfer, joint-venture, or localization as a quid-pro-quo for market access.”

Given the imminent change of administration, it’s reasonable to wonder how effective or listened-to the new effort will be.