Intel, being the largest player in the semiconductor market by sales, has a lot to gain from the accelerating cloud computing adoption in the enterprise, and the subsequent increased demand for servers powered by its chips.  One of the ways the company is looking to gain its an edge is investing in research.

Intel Labs announced that it will build 2 Intel Science and Technology Centers (ISTC) at Carnegie Mellon University focused on academic cloud computing research. The two centers represent a $30 million installment of a 5-year, $100 million program the chipmaker announced not too long ago.

“As with previously announced ISTCs for visual computing and secure computing, the new centers encourage tighter collaboration between university thought leaders and Intel. To encourage further collaboration, the ISTCs use open IP models with results publicly available through technical publications and open-source software releases.”

Intel is growing its investment in more than just research. Bloomberg reports that Intel President Arvind Sodhani said during a Beijing briefing today that the chipmaker’s VC subsidiary may invest as much as $500 million worldwide this year. That figure dwarfs the $327 million the company invested last year, mainly because it plans on expanding its foothold in China.

Intel Capital and China Digital TV jointly announced today an undisclosed investment in JoySee, a subsidiary of the latter that makes set-top boxes. JoySee’s products will now be powered by Intel Atom  CE4100 processors. JoySee is one of the three companies Intel invested a combined $22 million in, along with online retailer 6DXchange and Bocom Intelligent Network Technologies . Intel invested a total of $45 million in six Chinese this year, and Sodhani hopes that number will double to 12 by the end of this year.