Nearly 30 billion yuan, international semiconductor equipment maker to build chip R&D center
On May 22, local time, U.S. semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials (AMAT) said the company plans to build a chip research center in Silicon Valley.
The $4 billion research center is designed to facilitate the development and commercialization of the fundamental technologies needed by the global semiconductor and computing industries and is expected to be completed by 2026. The project, called Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC), is based in Sunnyvale, California, and will allow chipmakers to try out new machines in close proximity to full production lines.
Gary Dickerson, CEO of Applied Materials, noted that this will make it faster and easier to adapt new chip production technologies. At the same time, academic institutions will have access to cutting-edge research equipment. the overall goal of the EPIC center is to shorten the 10 to 15 years it takes for the academic research field to get to the factory floor.
The center is said to be the largest R&D center in the semiconductor industry. It will be larger than three American soccer fields and will bring together employees from chipmakers such as Intel, TSMC and Samsung Electronics to conduct approximately $25 billion worth of research in the first decade after its launch.