Intel today was awarded the second phase of the Department of Defense (DoD) State-of-the-Art-Heterogeneous Integration Prototype (SHIP) program. The effort seeks to integrate U.S. government chips with Intel's CPUs, ASICs, and FPGAs.

The program "provides new paths for the government's industry partners to develop and modernize mission-critical systems while taking advantage of Intel's U.S. manufacturing capabilities," wrote Jeff Rittener, chief government affairs officer at Intel, in a blog post.

The second phase of the project calls for Intel to develop prototypes of multi-chip packages and interface standards, protocols, and security for heterogeneous systems.

Heterogeneous packaging allows the assembly of multiple separately manufactured chips onto a single package. Intel claims this process enables greater performance per watt.

Intel also announced a three-year collaboration with Sandia National Labs to explore the advancement of neuromorphic computing and its potential to fight nuclear proliferation and terrorism.

Neuromorphic computing reimagines computers from the ground up, replicating the way neurons are organized, communicate, and learn at the hardware level, Rittener explained.

Intel and Sandia hope to advance research and scale up neuromorphic computing to determine how these systems can address some of the country's most pressing scientific and engineering challenges.

Intel also committed to protect U.S. semiconductor leadership through a series of partnerships with the U.S. government. The chipmaker, however, stopped short of announcing new U.S. chip fabs, despite pressure from the Trump administration and bipartisan efforts to preserve U.S. technological dominance.

"We find ourselves at a crossroads. Eighty percent of the world's semiconductor manufacturing capacity is now in Asia," Rittener wrote. "Intel and the entire U.S. semiconductor industry face fierce competition in the global semiconductor marketplace. The U.S. risks falling behind in an industry it once dominated and that its economy and national security depend on."

While most of Intel's fabs are located in Asia, the company does have several U.S.-based manufacturing facilities located in Oregon, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Intel's ambiguous commitments come as American chipmakers push for substantial government subsidies to bring chip manufacturing back to the U.S. and end the industry's reliance on China.

The Semiconductor Industry Association, a lobbyist group, proposed $37 billion in subsidies to support the construction of domestic semiconductor fabs, research funding, and aid for states seeking to woo manufacturers, according to a Wall Street Journal report in June.

That report came just weeks after the Trump administration entered into talks with Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to build chip foundries in the U.S. TSMC recently announced plans to construct a new fabrication facility in Arizona.