Designing a semiconductor chip is one thing. Turning that design into working hardware takes specialist software, manufacturing access and the skills to test whether the finished device performs as intended.
A new £18 million UK Advanced Chip Design Academy, hosted by the University of Edinburgh, aims to bring those stages closer together. The programme will give UK-based researchers access to commercial chip-design tools and opportunities to prototype, fabricate and test their designs.
Led by Professor Themis Prodromakis, the university’s Regius Chair of Engineering, the academy will be based within its Centre for Electronics Frontiers and Scottish Microelectronics Centre. Alongside access to technology, it is intended to establish a lasting UK training capability in advanced chip design.
The engineering challenge reaches beyond drawing a circuit that works on a computer. A chip must also be designed for manufacture, with its performance assessed once it has been turned into a physical device. Connecting these stages gives researchers a route to test their ideas against the demands of working hardware.
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For the academy, the aim is to strengthen that connection between British research and semiconductor manufacturing, helping promising designs move towards commercially relevant products.
‘Advanced semiconductors underpin the future of AI, quantum computing, and next-generation communications,’ said Prodromakis.
He said bringing academic expertise, design tools and industry-standard training together in Edinburgh would help researchers across the UK translate their designs into physical silicon.
That gives the programme a practical education role as well as a research one. Access to commercial tools offers an opportunity to develop skills using the technology employed in chip development, while prototyping and testing allow researchers to follow a design beyond the software stage.
The announcement forms part of a wider UK government investment package included in the Autumn Budget. Its objectives include supporting domestic AI businesses, strengthening national security and building the hardware capabilities needed for future technologies.
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Within that package, the academy’s focus is the engineering behind the hardware: developing the expertise to design chips and connecting that work more directly with the processes needed to manufacture them.
The university says the programme will support the development of UK semiconductor and AI hardware companies by helping research progress towards products. It also aims to strengthen the domestic skills base needed to sustain that activity.
For engineering researchers, the opportunity is therefore broader than access to another software package. The planned combination of tools, training and fabrication opportunities could make it easier to develop an idea, produce a prototype and find out how it performs.
The measure of its success will be what those opportunities enable: stronger design skills, working devices and a clearer route from university research to hardware that industry can use in practice.