Applied Materials has unveiled the EPIC1. Equipment and Process Innovation and CommercializationApplied Materials uses this name for its new collaborative R&D center.2. Electronics, Photonics and Integrated CircuitsEPIC names the collaboration center unveiled by Applied Materials. Center in Sunnyvale, California, a $5 billion investment for collaborative semiconductor process technology and manufacturing equipment research and development. The company describes the facility as the world’s largest site dedicated to this kind of work, with the goal of speeding the transition from breakthrough materials and process ideas to high-volume manufacturing.
The EPIC1. Equipment and Process Innovation and CommercializationApplied Materials uses this name for its new collaborative R&D center.2. Electronics, Photonics and Integrated CircuitsEPIC names the collaboration center unveiled by Applied Materials. Center spans 600,000 square feet and includes nearly four acres of advanced cleanroom space. Construction required more than six million hours. The building was designed to bring materials researchers, equipment developers, process engineers and chipmakers into the same environment, eliminating the handoffs that usually separate foundational research, equipment development, process integration and pilot production.
Applied says this model is intended to support the increasing complexity of AIartificial intelligence-era chipmaking. Inside EPIC1. Equipment and Process Innovation and CommercializationApplied Materials uses this name for its new collaborative R&D center.2. Electronics, Photonics and Integrated CircuitsEPIC names the collaboration center unveiled by Applied Materials., customer engineers and Applied teams will work in parallel on next-generation semiconductor technologies, with an emphasis on reducing learning cycles and improving the route to volume production. The company also expects the facility to give it earlier visibility into emerging technology requirements across several product generations.
The initial partner roster includes TSMCTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing CompanyTSMC is named as a founding partner of the EPIC Center., Intel, Samsung Electronics, Micron and SK hynix as founding partners. Broadcom, Advantest, SCREEN, KIOXIA and Besi are listed as innovation partners, while Arizona State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University, UC Berkeley and UCLA Samueli School of Engineering join as research partners. Applied says additional companies and organizations are expected to join over time.
Partner statements point to work on advanced packaging, interconnects, memory technologies, 3D architectures and heterogeneous integration. The facility is also positioned around wet and dry process co-optimization, process control, and test and measurement, with the aim of improving yield and accelerating production ramps for future AIartificial intelligence systems.