Semiconductor Education Alliance to address skills shortage
Bringing the semiconductor and academic worlds together to build new accelerated educational pathways.
Arm is announcing a new global initiative known as the Semiconductor Education Alliance, with support from partners including Arduino, Cadence, Cornell University, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute, the All-India Council for Technical Education, and the University of Southampton. The Semiconductor Education Alliance is bringing together key stakeholders across industry, academia and government to address the growing challenges of both finding talent and upskilling the existing workforce. To ensure these challenges don’t hinder industry growth at this critical time, the alliance is urging anyone with contributions to make to the semiconductor skills pipeline to get involved.
The alliance brings together several existing partnerships and workstreams from Arm and the wider industry and aims to create and build new ones. Deliverables will include competency frameworks tailored to the industry needs of specific geographies, and accelerated educational and training pathways, resources, and services that will help to build and support future talent pools.
Developed by Arm's highly experienced team of education professionals spanning schools to university and beyond, the alliance is an evolution of our existing education model in which Arm will play a vital coordination role. Community members will share resources, capabilities, and expertise in a flexible, federated and open model through a variety of forums. This will give teachers, researchers, aspiring or practicing engineers, and learners easier access to critical resources and unlock new opportunities to collaborate on projects such as joint bids for research grants. A number of projects are already in the works, for example:
• Arm, along with EDA partners, are working on new VLSI design educational resources using state-of-the-art EDA tools and IP
• New distance learning solutions in computer engineering and informatics are being developed from Arm and partners in industry and academia
• A global SoC design platform for academia with access to the latest semiconductor fabrication technologies from Arm and partners
Diversity is critical to building the next generation of semiconductor talent
To bring further diversity of talent into the industry, the alliance is committed to growing and supporting multiple routes into semiconductor careers, such as technical, vocational and self-study pathways. To achieve this, a key pillar of the alliance's approach is to allow the flexibility to engage in a variety of ways, making the industry accessible to a broad range of diverse individuals, regardless of their prior education or experience. Members of the alliance will create new opportunities for learners to gain hands-on experience through internships, apprenticeships, and co-op placements, as well as distance learning tracks on massive open online course (MOOC) platforms, where access is offered free to learners regardless of their financial means or geographic location.
A robust skills pipeline for an ecosystem building the future of computing on Arm
The Semiconductor Education Alliance aims to better align the industry around common goals, shared resources, and communities of best practice to tackle the skills gap that threatens progress today. At Arm, we’re committed to being a driving force within this alliance as we come together as an industry to continue to nurture a pipeline of talent building the future of computing on Arm.
With a strong and growing membership spanning the semiconductor supply chain, the alliance is seeing support from a range of key industry players including Arduino, Anglia Ruskin University, Cadence, Cornell University, IIT Jodhpur, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute, the All-India Council for Technical Education, the Semiconductor Research Corporation, the Semiconductor Industry Alliance, the University of Southampton, UK Electronics Skills Foundation and Universitat Politècnica de València.
