Aug. 19, 2005 — A consortium of companies in the Semiconductor Industry Association announced the launch of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI). It is intended to accelerate research in nanoelectronics in U.S. universities for the benefit of the semiconductor industry

To administer the NRI program, a new entity called the Nanoelectronics Research Corporation (NERC) was formed. It is a subsidiary of Semiconductor Research Corporation, university research management consortium located in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

The initiative’s fifteen-year goal is to demonstrate novel computing devices with critical dimensions below 10 nanometers and to exercise them in simple computer circuits — an achievement that would enable the semiconductor industry to extend Moore’s Law beyond the year 2020 when it is expected to reach the limits of the currently widespread CMOS processing technology.

The National Science Foundation and NERC will jointly fund the initiative, at the rate of $1 million each. Hans Coufal of IBM will be the director of NERC and will head the initiative’s technical program group. A governing council led by Paolo Gargini of Intel and Hans Stork of Texas Instruments will oversee the program’s efforts.