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More than two years ago, the Biden-Harris Administration and a bipartisan coalition in Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act (CHIPS) to further a singular ambition: advancing U.S. economic and national security by revitalizing the domestic semiconductor industry. The CHIPS Program Office (CPO) was established shortly after to implement this initiative, overseeing the allocation of funds and coordination of efforts to rebuild the domestic semiconductor ecosystem while acting as good stewards of taxpayer dollars. Since then, of the $38 billion available to allocate, CPO has awarded more than $33 billion and signed preliminary terms for an additional $3 billion, with more negotiations ongoing—meaning more than 96% of the funding has been allocated and over 86% has been awarded. CPO is also reviewing applications for dozens of additional projects. These investments are delivering results:
"These investments are delivering results" seems a bit of a stretch this early in the program. At this stage, surely they're still measuring inputs and saying that spending/investment is on track and being responsibly managed. I'm assuming here that "results" means chips shipping in volume. But perhaps they mean jobs created.
I'd overlooked the fact that there was a DRAM element to all this. The stated goal is 10% of world "leading edge" DRAM production by 2035. That doesn't seem that much given the DRAM consumption of US companies. Leaving aside the question of whether we'll be using DRAM as we understand it today in 10 years time (I'll let others comment here).
More generally, what I don't see in the vision and goals is whether the real objective is to make the US a bit less dependent on overseas manufacturing or actually to make it self-sufficient. Or even an exporter (as it once was). It's not clear (to me at least) where the 20% (leading edge logic) and 10% (leading edge DRAM) numbers come from.
