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SEMATECH was founded in the late 1980s as a consortium with DOD and semiconductor manufacturing companies to provide basic research and development for advanced chip manufacturing, kind of in response to the dominant role that Japanese semiconductor companies were starting to play.
I'm not sure what the Obama administration can do in the final months before we have a new President, so this working group will likely cease to exist in January 2017.
SEMATECH was founded in the late 1980s as a consortium with DOD and semiconductor manufacturing companies to provide basic research and development for advanced chip manufacturing, kind of in response to the dominant role that Japanese semiconductor companies were starting to play.
When I was in litho more than 6 years ago we did have some cooperation projects with SEMATECH then; it was in the early days of EUV. If I remember correctly I was involved in a cost-of-ownership study comparing double pattering vs. EUV. This now seems ages ago...
What I took from there is that SEMATECH strategy was more coporate driven by it's members than imec. SEMATECH has fee proportional to company revenue and implicitly also the political weight in the consortium. Imec were fixed fee per program maybe with some options on full data access or not etc. Also imec has been grown out of independent research organisation and has thus more independent oversight like a scientific board etc.
Additionally being located in the small country known as Belgium meant it had to have an international vision.
In hindsight the imec constellation seemed to work better in the longer term than the SEMATECH one.
Of course, it is possible only if current and next Govt (whoever be the next Prez) do some maneuvering. One of the biggest markets - say India - already has tacit or open call for boycott of Chinese goods, at least in some sectors and for reasons including political ones. Xiaomi for instance was banned for some time on some allegations of 'security breach', but it could possibly to do with the chipsets that they used - whether it was Mediatek or (American) Qualcomm. US Govt can negotiate with Indian Govt or other world Govts on such things. I dont think it is technologically possible to maintain the lead or edge, unless you block things politically.
I wonder what politicians think "competitiveness" means. It might mean something different to them from what business people or the media think it means. And it could be one of those code words for something people don't like to say.
Some things it could mean:
1) Cost competitiveness (How to improve US labor and tax costs to attract capital without increasing inequality)
2) Productivity competitiveness (why has US productivity stagnated? Is it related to lack of capital investments?)
3) Competitive strategy (what can the US do, as alternative to protectionism, to develop strengths and reduce weaknesses?)
4) Punish foreign governments who employ hackers
5) Punish domestic firms seeking to place factories offshore
6) Punish the EU if they start to implement protectionism via antitrust and privacy rules
As a veteran of the "old" Bell Labs, it pains me to see a decline of exploratory research in the semiconductor industry. IMEC, cited by Staf above, has an advantage in its academic roots, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, which probably makes it more interested in extending knowledge than extending profits. Will Obama reverse that in three months? Not likely. Best case this move raises meaningful questions.
I think folks are missing what's really going on here. This is all about the Chinese and their mercantilist ambitions for trade in general but semiconductor and high tech trade in particular. Take a fresh look at Pritzker's speech. Chinese plans, if unchecked, will absolutely crater the memory and foundry markets. Google China's Indigenous Innovation Policy. (I have written a short background on it here.)This will be one of the key issues of the Trump Presidency. We can only hope that the US and its allies find a way to bring China to the table and work out a solution that will preserve the future of semi tech innovation!
