Artificial intelligence (AI) is an important research field of digitization and has the potential to sustain growth and prosperity in a disruptive way. The role of special hardware for AI is still underdeveloped: while corporations such as Xilinx, NVIDIA, ARM and Intel are integrating more and more AI elements into their platforms, AI hardware aspects are hardly covered in university teaching.

Dedicated AI-capable hardware is of particular relevance in Germany, since, in contrast to the alternative of cloud processing, it does not depend on the collection of data in the cloud, which is problematic from a data protection point of view. In order to protect our socio-political values such as the right to privacy, informational self-determination and data federalism with data-driven innovations (Industry 4.0, 6G, smart cities, autonomous driving, IoT, Monitoring using remote sensing and geodata) requires "edge computing". Here, the processing of sometimes highly sensitive information takes place at the point of origin ("network edge"), and only necessary information is transmitted.

Current university teaching only touches this AI hardware topic minimally due to separate sub-disciplines. This is where we want to start our project. We would like to address a multidisciplinary target group (made up of hardware, AI and applications) in an integrative (through open courses, practice-oriented teaching and teamwork) and realistic (chip production in Germany, also as part of courses by students) with an attractive range of courses. Specifically, we are planning a hybrid, cross-university educational offer that bundles theoretical foundations, design and exemplary application.

Our consortium (with the affiliated Leibniz Institute IHP in Frankfurt/O.) has the unique opportunity for chip production in Germany, which allows students to implement AI hardware in practice during their studies. The consortium consists of the following partners:

• University of Potsdam:
• Prof. Milos Krstic, Institute of Computer Science(overall project management)
• Prof. Benno Stabernack, Institute of Computer Science
• Prof. Ulrike Lucke, Institute of Computer Science
• Prof. Oliver Korup, Institute of Environmental Science and Geography


• Technical University of Munich:
• Prof. Martin Schulz/Prof. Carsten Trinitis, School of Computation, Information and Technology
• Prof. Martin Werner, School of Engineering and Design
• Prof. Daniel Cremers, School of Computation, Information and Technology

Our sub-project is responsible for the area of educational technology in the network.

Funded by the BMBF - Federal Ministry of Education and Research (2021-2025) with a total of 4 million euros, of which 340 thousand euros for our sub-project.