Engineering | News
UC Berkeley Receives $2 Million for Research in Mobile Device Efficiency
ATMI, a supplier of advanced materials solutions to the microelectronics industry, has donated $2 million to the University of California, Berkeley to support development of "ultra-low power consuming microelectronic device architecture and design that would enable greater ubiquity of mobile devices," according to the Danbury, CT-based company.
The announcement was made at the UC Berkeley campus where Doug Neugold, ATMI's CEO, presented the check to Shankar Sastry, dean of the College of Engineering, and Chenming Hu, TSMC distinguished professor in the graduate school of the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences.
Hu, called the "father of the 3D transistor," will head up the research program. He is known for creating computer chip design FinFET commonly used at semiconductor companies. Hu has been employed as a professor at UC Berkeley since 1976 and has held the position of chief technology officer at integrated circuits manufacturing company TSMC.
Professor Sayeef Salahuddin at UC Berkeley will assist Hu with the program, and they will collaborate with National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.
The $2 million in funding will be used to conduct research and develop design for new semiconductor device solutions in overall efficiency, consumption, and power storage. Hu and Salahuddin will look at "new structures, materials and operational principles of transistors that may enable future low-power integrated circuits and electronics."
"UC Berkeley has a proven record of innovative semiconductor device research that has pushed the boundaries of performance and power efficiency of transistors," said Sastry in the release. "The ATMI gift will aid research toward accomplishing new advances, especially in reducing the energy footprint in microelectronics."
Depending on the results of the research, ATMI, or other semiconductor companies, could bring new materials developed in the research program to market.
For more information about ATMI, visit atmi.com.
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Tim Sohn is a 10-year veteran of the news business, having served in capacities from reporter to editor-in-chief of a variety of publications including Web sites, daily and weekly newspapers, consumer and trade magazines, and wire services. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @editortim.
