ALBUQUERQUE -- Intel Corp. will donate the designs for its best-selling microprocessor to the U.S. government in an effort to help researchers make radiation-proof chips.
The world's largest computer chip maker said Tuesday it will hand over the blueprints for its Pentium processor -- an earlier version of the computer chip now used in most new computers -- to a partnership of the U.S. Department of Energy, NASA, the Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office."This is a unique opportunity to significantly advance the state-of-the-art in space and defense electronics," said Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. "This cooperation between the Department of Energy and Intel will save taxpayers millions of dollars in developmental costs and will speed up the availability of chips that will help support defense and space needs in the next century."
The designs will become part of a four-year, $64 million plan to manufacture chips that are radiation "hardened" and could survive in radiation-filled space environments or stand up to a nuclear blast, government researchers said. The research will be spearheaded in Albuquerque at the DOE-funded Sandia National Laboratories.
The deal was announced at Intel's headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., with a news conference attended by Richardson and NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin.
Over time, radiation can damage solid-state electronics and cause their failure by shutting down transistors, scientists say. Such shutdowns can affect communications satellites, nuclear sensors or weapon targeting systems.
Leon Alkalai, a center director at the NASA-funded Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said the new chips would protect circuitry from space's biggest dose of radiation: solar flares.