NACS to disband after DARPA snub

Electronic News, Nov 25, 1991 by Jack Robertson

WASHINGTON -- The National Advisory Committee on Semiconductors will disband after the first of next year, and turn over its Micro Tech 2000 program and national semiconductor strategy to the Semiconductor Industry Association, sources on the panel said last week.

NACS failed in its attempts to interest the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) or the Commerce Department into taking over the functions of the advisory group and to implement its proposals, the sources said.

SIA, which has been working to come up with its own technology program, agreed to step in to fill the shoes of NACS when no other sponsor appeared. The trade association so far has no immediate plans on how the transition will be carried out.

Ian Ross, president emeritus of AT&T Bell Laboratories and NACS chairman, was in Asia last week and unavailable for comment. At the last several NACS meetings, however, Dr. Ross had hinted that the panel had no plans to continue after it released its final report in January.

"We are looking for some body to take over Micro Tech 2000 and implement the socalled National Semiconductor Strategy recommendations," Dr. Ross said this month. "My opinion is that after our third annual report is issued, we will have brought as much wisdom as we can to the situation and done what we were chartered to do."

The original law that directed the White House to set up the NACS panel gave the advisory body a three-year life, which expires this year. However, sources said the Administration has full legal power to continue a national semiconductor advisory panel if it desired. The Technology Preeminence Act now pending in Congress would mandate another three-year extended life for NACS -- but this legislation is still tied up.

Initial reaction of key industry officials aware of the upcoming switch was mixed. Since the White House panel has had trouble over its three-year life getting any of its recommendations adopted, some observers believed an aggressive industry advocate might have better success. Others worried that the effort might be hampered by its identity with a self-interest group, which has its own quarrels with the computer and semiconductor equipment sectors of industry.

NACS' unsuccessful proposals included: boosting Sematech annual funding by 50 percent to bolster the equipment industry; setting up an electronics credit corporation; reestablishing a U.S. consumer electronics industry; setting up a national program for high definition displays; converting the $200 million a year military VHSIC (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit) funding to develop dual-use commercial semiconductors.

At the last NAC meeting several months ago Dr. Ross expressed a trace of disappointment over the progress made thus far by the Committee.

"I don't consider the response to our activity to have been overwhelming."

The Micro Tech 2000 roadmap was one of the panel's most ambitious efforts -- to lay out all the steps from design and production to testing to make commercial 0.12-micron line width chips by the end of the decade. James Meindl, provost of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and co-technical task leader for Micro Tech 2000, said virtually every step must be achieved to recah the 0.12-micron goal and most of them require extensive development efforts.

Folding NACS into SIA would still find many of the same industry leaders involved. Executives on the NACS panel are also leaders in SIA -- from AT&T, IBM, Motorola, National Semiconductor and Texas Instruments. Government members of NACS presumably would not be direct participants in the SIA effort. Although many government NACS members were actively involved in drafting the panel proposals, they had virtually no impact in getting the Bush Administration to carry out any of the recommendations.

The last NACS meeting will be in January, when the panel will release its final report. That will lay out a National Semiconductor Strategy, which the group hopes will be taken over by SIA.