LAHORE: The provincial government has approved Rs41.75 million funding for establishing chip design centres in eight universities.

The UET Lahore, the UET Taxila, the ITU Lahore, and the Islamia University Bahawalpur will have centres during the current financial year while the MNS UET Multan, the KF UEIT Rahim Yar Khan, the University of Gujrat, and the University of Chakwal next year.

Integrated Circuits (ICs), commonly known as chips, have radically altered the industry and nanotechnology has greatly contributed to major advances in computing and electronics, leading to faster, smaller, and more portable systems that can process, manage, and store larger and larger amounts of information.

Chip design technology is one of the most important and significant technologies globally in the electronics industry. With the Covid-19 crisis disrupting supply chains and geopolitical tensions increasing, semiconductor companies have become more interested in achieving end-to-end design and manufacturing capabilities for leading edge technologies.

Local universities in Pakistan are not extensively teaching the skills which are flourishing quite rapidly all over the world such as micro and nano-electronics IC design because of a lack of highly-trained faculty and academic resources in these domains.

Punjab Minister for Higher Education Raja Yasir Hamayun took an initiative of skills development in micro and nanoelectronics design technologies in the universities of the province. He constituted a committee led by UET VC Prof Dr Syed Mansoor Sarwar.

The minister says they can’t afford to wait anymore since leading players are already years ahead in technology development. He says the future of the semiconductor industry belongs to advancements in nanoelectronics chip design technologies. He says a project was approved for the provision of software and hardware facilities for Microelectronic Design and Development in eight universities to promote R&D culture and train faculty in the universities.

Published in Dawn, EOS, June 16th, 2021