For department chairs and deans
Building the US microelectronics workforce
Federal agencies treat the microelectronics workforce as a matter of economic and national security, and US policy now funds bringing chip manufacturing back home. Embedded systems is where those chips become products. This page sets out the public record, in the agencies' own words, with a link to each source.
A national-security priority
The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 sets out key technology areas that the National Science Foundation describes as “critical to the nation's economic and national security,” and “Semiconductors and microelectronics” is one of them. NSF also reports that the act “appropriates $200 million in funding for semiconductor workforce training and education activities.” Source: NSF, CHIPS and Science.
In its Dear Colleague Letter Advancing Microelectronics Education (NSF 23-115), NSF writes: “Reasserting US leadership in microelectronics will require the nation to train and engage a well-prepared workforce.” The letter invites education projects “extending through undergraduate, graduate and other levels of adult learning.” Source: NSF 23-115.
Bringing jobs and know-how back to the United States
The Department of Commerce's CHIPS for America program, run through NIST, describes the act's funding as programs “to strengthen and revitalize the U.S. position in semiconductor research, development, and manufacturing,” “while also investing in American workers.” It calls semiconductors “integral to America's economic and national security.” Source: NIST, CHIPS for America.
NSF's letter on microelectronics education adds that boosting domestic chip manufacturing can “provide enduring economic and national security benefits.” Source: NSF 23-115.
Where this course fits
Chips do their work inside embedded systems: boards, bootloaders, device trees, drivers and the Linux systems that run on top. That is the layer this course teaches, at the bench, to second- and third-year students in electrical engineering, computer engineering and computer science.
Graduates leave having brought up real hardware from the boot ROM to a running application, read datasheets, written drivers and recovered broken boards. Those are skills product teams need wherever chips are designed into systems. The kit boards run upstream Linux and U-Boot, so what students learn carries over to industry work.
The quotations above are the agencies' own words, linked to their pages. How the course fits a particular program or proposal is for each school to judge. To talk about bringing the course to your department, contact us.
For public programs that can help pay for the course, see funding.