Democratizing chip design with Chips4All

NYU Tandon School of Engineering is spearheading a novel initiative aimed at expanding access to semiconductor design education, supporting key objectives of the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act and bolstering NYU’s growing prominence in chip design.

“Chips4All” is a new comprehensive training program for NYU doctoral and master’s students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields, to learn chip design regardless of their engineering backgrounds.  

The National Science Foundation (NSF) selected Chips4All for its highly competitive Research Traineeship (NRT) program, which supports initiatives for research-based master’s and doctoral degree programs to develop the skills, knowledge, and competencies needed to pursue a range of STEM careers.

Chip4All will train participants to design Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), chips tailored for specialized tasks rather than general-purpose computing. These custom chips are vital for jump-starting progress in a range of fields, from biomedical devices to cryptography and computational biophysics, with the potential to advance multiple industries and scientific disciplines.

“For too long, chip design has been the domain of a relatively small number of computer engineering specialists who have the access and skills to use the advanced tools needed,” said Siddharth Garg, Institute Associate Professor in NYU Tandon’s Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department and a member of NYU WIRELESS. Garg is Chips4All’s Principal Investigator (PI). “With Chips4All, we want to  break down barriers to entry, empowering researchers from diverse backgrounds with these crucial skills. This democratization aligns perfectly with the CHIPS Act’s vision of fostering a robust, diverse semiconductor talent pool in America, and unleashing  innovation and entrepreneurship across numerous chip-dependent industries.”

The five-year Chips4All program will bring together NYU doctoral and master’s students from a range of STEM disciplines — including those in medicine, chemistry, and computer science — with hardware-focused engineering students, primarily from NYU Tandon’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

The domain-specific students complete courses in hardware design while the hardware-focused students take courses in their counterparts’ STEM subjects. Ultimately, trainees from the two groups team up for a Hardware Prototyping Capstone, creating prototypes of chips they design for domain-specific purposes, which could include gene sequencing, new cryptographic protocols, and other transformative applications. 

To support this hands-on learning, NYU is establishing a Silicon Makerspace, providing access to cutting-edge chip design tools and fabrication resources for all NYU students, faculty, and staff. Also under the Chips4All umbrella, NYU will host a Brooklyn Chips Summit (BRICS), organized as a three-day event featuring talks by leading experts in chip design, seminars, and panels open to the general public. 

As microchips become increasingly specialized, the ability to rapidly scale their design and production emerges as a critical bottleneck for innovators across research, entrepreneurship, and industry. Chips4All aims to remove this roadblock and create a replicable model for cross-disciplinary hardware education in the United States. 

“Chips4All is yet another powerful example of how NYU has embraced the national call to action from the Chips and Science Act,” said Nina Gray, Associate Vice Provost for Research Planning and Analysis at NYU. “Our researchers are bringing their expertise to bear to advance the semiconductor industry in our region through new educational and workforce development programs as well as new technologies, such as advanced cellular service and new nanofabrication facilities. Through our partnerships with consortia such as NORDTECH and the Mid Atlantic Semiconductor Hub, we will continue to pursue pathways for our discovery, innovation, and education to benefit the nation’s semiconductor ecosystem.”     

Chips4All joins another NSF-funded project that NYU Tandon is launching to expand access to chip design training. BASICS — which the NSF selected for its latest Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies (ExLENT) investment — is a new 28-week self-paced online course for non-STEM professionals to learn chip design fundamentals, so they can pivot into key and emerging technological careers.

The launch of both Chips4All and BASICS adds to NYU Tandon’s efforts to democratize chip design, most notably with its recent high-profile Chip Chat project that led to the world’s first chip designed through natural-language conversations with a Large Language Model AI platform.

NYU plans to train 308 graduate students, including 58 PhD candidates, via Chips4All, starting in Spring 2025.

Joining Garg on the Chips4All NRT are its co-PIs: Tamar Schlick, Professor of Chemistry, Mathematics and Computer Science at NYU Arts & Science;  Vivek Srinivasan, Associate Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine; Anirudh Sivaraman Kaushalram, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at NYU Courant Institute; and Patricia Satterstrom, Assistant Professor of Public Service at NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. The project’s Senior Persons are: Austin Rovinski, Assistant Professor in NYU Tandon’s ECE Department;  Brandon Reagen, Assistant Professor in NYU Tandon’s ECE Department and in its Computer Science and Engineering Department;  Ramesh Karri,  NYU Tandon ECE Department Chair and Co-Founder of NYU Center for Cybersecurity; and Yao Wang, Professor in NYU Tandon’s ECE Department and in its Biomedical Engineering Department and a member of NYU WIRELESS.