Applied Materials Opens $5B EPIC Center to Accelerate Chip R&D

The facility spans more than 600,000 square feet and includes almost four acres of cleanroom space. Applied Materials said it contains enough steel to build two Eiffel Towers. The center’s founding partners include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Micron Technology Inc. and SK hynix Inc. Innovation partners include Broadcom Inc. and Advantest Corp., along with academic researchers from Stanford University, UC Berkeley and UCLA.

Applied Materials CEO Gary Dickerson told the New York Post that the EPIC Center is intended to accelerate chip research processes as much as possible. He said five to 10 key technologies determine semiconductor performance and yield, and the goal is to cut the whole cycle time by at least 30% and improve time to market. “There’s enormous value in doing that,” Dickerson said.

Traditionally, the research and development process for new chip technologies could take up to a decade, according to the company. Applied Materials said that pace is insufficient for an industry moving as quickly as AI, as chipmakers race to build more sophisticated processors that can accelerate compute performance and increase power savings beyond current-generation silicon.

Engineers from Applied Materials plan to work with counterparts from major chipmakers on projects intended to co-optimize technologies such as 3D architectures, advanced packaging, low-resistance wiring and hybrid bonding. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the industry urgently needs to collaborate on transistors, interconnects and advanced packaging to capture what he described as a multitrillion-dollar opportunity for AI computing. “We see a path to more than a trillion transistors in a package by 2030,” Tan said. “As architectures become more complex and R&D costs continue to rise, we need to move faster and work more closely with our equipment partners. EPIC gives our teams the opportunity to work side-by-side with Applied on materials and process innovation so we can accelerate development, improve R&D efficiency and bring new technologies to market faster.”

Dr. Prabu Raja, president of Applied’s Semiconductor Products Group, said the collaborative approach will speed commercialization of new technologies. “At today’s atomic-scale dimensions, many materials and materials interfaces behave in entirely new ways, and making them work at industry scale demands coordinated development and integrated solutions,” Raja said. “EPIC is the only place where materials, process technology and equipment will be innovated in parallel, which increases the success rate of new materials and technologies. Because our customers’ own engineers help optimize the technology before it ever reaches their factory, what leaves EPIC arrives at the fab ready to ramp to high performance and high yield sooner.”

Dickerson told the New York Post that the EPIC Center could help researchers compress new development lifecycles by at least 30%, which he said is critical to easing the enormous energy demands that AI compute has placed on the world. “It’s absolutely essential,” he said. “You’re improving that energy-efficient computing many times versus where we’re at today. It’s many, many times better than where we’re at today.”

Dickerson declined to discuss specific research projects currently underway at the EPIC Center, but he said some of the first breakthroughs will have major implications across healthcare, industrial production and education, as well as electronic devices such as smartphones and computers.