Lahore: The provincial government approved Rs 41.75 Million for establishing chip design centres at eight universities.

Integrated Circuits (ICs), commonly known as chips, have radically altered the industry and nanotechnology has greatly contributed to major advances in computing and electronics, leading to faster, smaller, and more portable systems that can process, manage, and store larger and larger amounts of information.

Per the details, many governments share this interest and are attempting to support their local semiconductor markets, while Pakistan still lagging way behind in terms of any R&D Centre that could tap in the potential available in chip design technologies and could train a work force for both academia and industry.

Local Universities in Pakistan are not extensively teaching the skills which are flourishing quite rapidly all over the world such as the micro and Nano-electronics IC design because of the lack of highly trained faculty and academic resources in these domains.

The Punjab minister for Higher Education Raja Yasir Humayun Sarfraz, Tuesday constituted a committee comprising Vice Chancellors of the relevant universities, few experts in the domain, and some key officials from the Planning and Development wing and Higher Education Department of the provincial government. With the stated position that “we cannot afford to wait anymore since leading players are already years ahead in technology development,” Raja Yasir Humayun further supported his brainchild with the grant of permission and funds necessary for execution of the project.