Applied Materials Opens $5 Billion Chip Research Center
The Sunnyvale facility will bring chipmakers together with Applied Materials engineers to develop future processor and memory technologies.
Key takeaways
- Applied Materials unveiled its 600,000-square-foot EPIC research facility in Sunnyvale.
- The company expects total capital investment in the facility to reach $5 billion.
- Chipmakers will work alongside Applied Materials engineers and get early access to its equipment.
- The center is for research, not commercial chip production.
Applied Materials unveiled its EPIC semiconductor research center in Sunnyvale, California, on Monday. The 600,000-square-foot facility is part of a project whose total capital investment is expected to reach $5 billion, the company said.
Intel, TSMC, Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung are among the chipmakers partnering on the project. Their researchers will work with Applied Materials engineers and get early access to the company’s equipment as they develop advances in processors and memory chips.
Applied Materials said the collaboration could cut the typical time from a chip concept to commercialization from 10 to 12 years to as little as six. The company described EPIC as the largest-ever U.S. investment in advanced semiconductor equipment research and development.
The center is designed for research, not commercial chip production, so it will not itself bring chip manufacturing back to the United States. Applied Materials CEO Gary Dickerson said that products and services being developed for AI gave him confidence that demand for chips and improvements in performance and power efficiency would continue to grow.
This article was produced with the help of AI technology. Based on reporting by the outlets listed above.
