Riyadh: King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST): King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) today honored the winning teams in the second edition of the national 'Chipathon' challenge, which specializes in electronic chip design, in the presence of President of KACST Dr. Munir Eldesouki. The challenge aims to advance the national aspirations and priorities of the research, development, and innovation sector, thereby enhancing Saudi Arabia's competitiveness and leadership in deep technologies.
According to Saudi Press Agency, KACST First Vice President for Research and Development Dr. Talal Al-Sudairi stated that 'Chipathon 2' comes as part of the objectives of KACST, the Saudi Semiconductor Program, and Academy 32 to develop national talent in one of the fields expected to have the greatest impact on the future of technology globally. He noted that investing in Saudi talent represents a fundamental pillar for building a knowledge-based economy driven by innovation.
Al-Sudairi explained that Chipathon 2 gave participants the opportunity to work on engineering challenges related to computing and artificial intelligence technologies. He added that the scale of participation and the quality of the outcomes reflected the presence of a promising national base of talent capable of contributing to the development of an advanced ecosystem in the semiconductor sector. He also pointed out that electronic chips have become a strategic component closely linked to economic growth and industrial competitiveness worldwide.
Chipathon witnessed broad participation from Saudi universities, attracting more than 1,000 students from over 40 universities, before the top 50 projects advanced to the final stages following a series of training, mentoring, and practical work programs focused on addressing challenges in electronic chip design and improving memory and embedded systems performance.
The first place award went to a project focused on the development and design of a high-speed, low-power SRAM memory to support in-memory computing applications in edge artificial intelligence systems. The design achieved an access time of 1.1 nanoseconds and power consumption of 4.45 milliwatts. The project was developed by a team consisting of Nada Al-Khalaf and Deema Al-Dhuwaiyan from Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Sarah Al-Shahri from King Khalid University, and Habib Al-Jizani from King Saud University.
Second place went to a project aimed at improving memory access speed through the addition of a data bypass path, enhancing processing speed in high-performance applications. The project was developed by Mohammed Al-Ghamdi from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Nawaf Al-Otaibi from Umm Al-Qura University, Aroob Al-Shammari from Prince Fahd bin Sultan University, and Maryam Al-Qassem from Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University.
Third place was awarded to a project focused on improving the performance of on-chip embedded memory for applications requiring low response time, through transistor sizing and signal timing optimization. The project contributed to reducing access time by approximately 11%, with a limited increase in power consumption of only 1.17%. It was developed by Mohammed Al-Dawood and Mohammed Al-Attas from King Saud University, Majd Bayeh from Taibah University, and Joud Al-Ghamiz from Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University.
"Chipathon 2' is one of the national initiatives launched by KACST to strengthen integration between Saudi universities and the technology and industrial sectors, create competitive pathways for scientific disciplines to discover young talent, and empower them to transform ideas into scalable applications in deep technology fields.
