First came VHSIC, then came MIMIC, and now comes ACE to push electronics technology

Posted by John Keller

THE MIL & AERO BLOG, 2 July 2013. The U.S. Department of Defense has sponsored several major research programs over the past few decades to push revolutionary advancements in sophisticated electronic components. First was the Very-High-Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC) program in 1980. Eight years later came the Microwave/Millimeter-Wave Monolithic Integrated Circuit (MIMIC) program.

Today, however, we may be on the verge of a third program that ultimately may be just as important and just as influential in pushing the state of the art in electronics as VHSIC and MIMIC. The newest program is called ACE, which is short for Advanced Components for Electronic Warfare.

The VHSIC program three decades ago was a multi-year, multi-phase initiative to push advances in integrated circuit materials, lithography, packaging, testing, and algorithms. It also created computer-aided design tools, most notably the VHDL hardware description language. VHDL itself is short for VHSIC Hardware Description Language.

In 1988 came the MIMIC program, which focused on gallium arsenide (GaAs) integrated circuit design and manufacturing of devices that operate at microwave frequencies that perform functions such as microwave mixing, power amplification, low-noise amplification, and high frequency switching.

The VHSIC program, in other words, sought to push digital technology for high-speed processors. MIMIC, on the other hand, concentrated on RF electronics for advanced applications in radar, signals intelligence, electronic warfare (EW), and similar uses.

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Now comes ACE, which seeks to develop some of the world's most advanced and capable electronic and photonic components for tomorrow's EW systems. The initial stage of the ACE program, called Phase Zero, kicked off just last Friday with nine contract awards to some of the U.S. defense industry's most notable technology companies.

We're not talking about big money yet -- Phase-Zero contracts are worth only a collective $3 million -- but the program has the potential to expand over several years and perhaps hundreds of millions of research dollars.

ACE, like the MIMIC program before it, seeks to establish capabilities, infrastructure, and knowledge necessary to design and produce advanced electronic and photonic components for advanced EW applications at low costs and high yields.

Companies involved in the ACE Phase Zero program are Raytheon, BAE Systems, HRL Laboratories, Rockwell Collins, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Aurrion, and LGS Innovations.

With companies like these involved, and with the backing of the U.S. Department of Defense, it's likely we'll see some major breakthroughs in electronic and photonic integrated circuit technology over the next several years.