“The Department of Defense’s proposed FY 2018 budget includes a $75 million allocation for DARPA in support of a new, public-private “electronics resurgence” initiative. The initiative seeks to undergird a new era of electronics in which advances in performance will be catalyzed not just by continued component miniaturization but also by radically new microsystem materials, designs, and architectures. The new funds will supplement the Agency’s FY 2018 R&D portfolio in electronics, photonics, and related systems to create a coordinated effort valued at more than $200 million, to be further supplemented by significant commercial sector investments. The new initiative comes at a time when the microsystems technology community is facing an array of long-anticipated obstacles to its relentless and storied decades-long march of progress. The microelectronics revolution—which began after World War II with the invention of the transistor and led to today’s chips bearing billions of these now astoundingly minuscule digital switches—has arrived at an inflection point, beyond which innovators will no longer be able to rely solely on the benefits of cramming more and more electronic devices into smaller and smaller spaces.”
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