MINNEAPOLIS, MN — The University of Minnesota has received a four-year $5.3 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to lead an effort toward US semiconductor innovation and circuit design.

Other partners on the grant include Texas A&M University and Intel.

The University of Minnesota is one of 11 universities or companies to receive funding from the DARPA Intelligent Design of Electronic Assets (IDEA) program.

“The goal of our research is to replace the proprietary model with an open-source software environment for analog and mixed-signal designs,” said Sachin Sapatnekar, a University of Minnesota professor of electrical and computer engineering who will lead the grant. “In short, we seek to ‘democratize’ chip design by facilitating open access to chip design tools and seeding a community of users. The result will be lower costs to consumers for electronics.”

The IDEA program aims to create a “no human in the loop” layout generator that would enable users with limited electronic design expertise to complete the physical design of electronic hardware within 24 hours.

“Through the IDEA program, DARPA aims to eliminate the Department of Defense’s resource and expertise gap associated with custom electronic hardware design for the most advanced technologies by enabling full automation and applying machine intelligence,” said Andreas Olofsson, the Microsystems Technology Office program manager leading IDEA.