Applied Materials has unveiled its Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC) Center in Sunnyvale, California, bringing major semiconductor manufacturers, equipment companies and university researchers into a shared facility designed to accelerate the development of advanced chipmaking technologies.
As customer projects commence, Applied Materials expects capital spending on the facility to scale over time to approximately US$5 billion. The company describes EPIC as the world’s largest research and development facility dedicated to collaborative semiconductor process technology and manufacturing equipment development.
Bringing research and manufacturing development together
Covering 600,000 square feet, the EPIC Center houses nearly four acres of advanced cleanroom space. Construction required more than six million hours, according to Applied Materials, with the facility designed to accommodate research across multiple semiconductor manufacturing disciplines.
The centre is designed to address the separation between different stages of semiconductor development. Traditionally, foundational materials research, equipment and process development, and pilot production take place in separate environments, requiring technologies to pass between different teams before reaching commercial manufacturing. By bringing these activities into one facility, EPIC allows materials researchers, equipment engineers and chipmakers to develop and evaluate technologies in parallel, an approach Applied Materials expects will reduce development handovers and identify manufacturing challenges earlier.
At atomic-scale dimensions, semiconductor materials and their interfaces can behave differently, complicating manufacturing processes, while advanced chip architectures require closer integration between materials engineering, equipment design and production techniques. Dr Prabu Raja, President of the Semiconductor Products Group at Applied Materials, explained that the facility would allow materials, process technologies and equipment to be developed simultaneously. Customer engineers would participate in optimising technologies before their introduction into fabrication plants, with the aim of achieving high performance and production yields sooner.
For participating chipmakers, Applied Materials expects the arrangement to provide earlier access to next-generation materials and manufacturing equipment, alongside shorter testing and development cycles. Direct involvement in customer research programmes is also expected to give Applied Materials greater visibility into emerging technology requirements across several generations of semiconductor development, helping to guide its research investments and the development of equipment and services for future manufacturing processes.
Chipmakers and equipment partners target advanced architectures
The EPIC Center opens with partners spanning semiconductor manufacturing, equipment development and academic research. Its five founding partners are TSMC, Intel, Samsung, Micron and SK hynix, while Broadcom, Advantest, SCREEN, KIOXIA and Besi are participating as innovation partners, contributing expertise across semiconductor systems, manufacturing processes, testing and advanced packaging. Each partner brings its own technology development challenges and engineers into the facility, working alongside Applied Materials teams through secure, collaborative development cycles.
Research into leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing includes advances in transistor architectures, wiring and advanced packaging. TSMC Chairman and CEO Dr C.C. Wei identified technologies beyond the 2nm manufacturing node as an area where earlier access to equipment development could accelerate the transition to high-volume manufacturing, citing new chip architectures, low-resistance wiring and advanced packaging for energy-efficient AI systems. Intel is also concentrating on increasingly complex semiconductor architectures, with CEO Lip-Bu Tan noting that the company sees a path towards integrating more than one trillion transistors into a single package by 2030. Closer collaboration with equipment partners is intended to improve research efficiency and accelerate the development of new technologies.
Memory technology forms another substantial part of EPIC’s research agenda. Micron plans to collaborate with Applied Materials on materials and manufacturing processes for future memory technologies as data-intensive AI workloads increase requirements for memory and storage performance. SK hynix has similarly identified high-bandwidth memory (HBM), DRAM and NAND as areas for collaboration, with an emphasis on addressing the technical challenges of AI computing. Nohjung Kwak, President and CEO of SK hynix, said:
“The defining challenge of AI computing is moving data fast enough to keep increasingly powerful processors fully utilised, and meeting that challenge requires memory with far greater bandwidth, speed and capacity. At EPIC, SK hynix and Applied will bring together our leadership in advanced memory with Applied’s leadership in materials engineering and semiconductor manufacturing technology to address major inflections across HBM, DRAM and NAND, and accelerate memory innovation for the AI era.”
Samsung’s involvement covers leading-edge logic, memory and advanced packaging, connecting several areas of semiconductor manufacturing development within the same research environment. Meanwhile, KIOXIA, participating as an innovation partner, intends to work with Applied Materials engineers and other collaborators to accelerate the development of next-generation memory technologies.
Other innovation partners are aligning architectural and testing capabilities with the facility’s manufacturing workflows. Broadcom intends to connect future computing, memory and connectivity requirements with advanced packaging development, allowing system-level requirements to influence materials and manufacturing research earlier. In testing and measurement, Advantest will contribute semiconductor testing and measurement expertise, connecting front-end process development with back-end testing requirements. Its collaboration with Applied Materials includes capabilities associated with the Advantest Innovation Center, with the companies targeting improvements in manufacturing yields and production ramp-up.
Process optimisation and advanced packaging hardware are represented by SCREEN and Besi. SCREEN will focus on optimising wet and dry manufacturing processes for increasingly complex three-dimensional semiconductor devices and advanced packaging structures, with the aim of improving yields and accelerating production ramp-ups. Besi’s participation builds on its existing work with Applied Materials in hybrid bonding, with the companies advancing the technology by combining Besi’s expertise in precision die-to-wafer bonding with Applied Materials’ front-end processing capabilities, targeting future high-performance three-dimensional integrated devices.
University researchers gain access to industrial-scale development
Academic research is another component of the EPIC operating model, with five institutions joining as research partners: Arizona State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University, UC Berkeley and UCLA Samueli School of Engineering will participate in research activities alongside semiconductor manufacturers and equipment developers. The arrangement is intended to give university researchers access to industry-scale equipment and technical expertise, allowing new materials, devices and integration technologies to be evaluated in environments closer to commercial semiconductor manufacturing.
For Arizona State University, EPIC is expected to extend an existing collaboration with Applied Materials through the Materials-to-Fab Center at ASU Research Park. University President Michael Crow identified engineering education and workforce development as additional benefits, with students gaining experience across multiple semiconductor development disciplines. UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons similarly identified access to manufacturing-relevant research facilities as an opportunity for university teams to test and refine semiconductor technologies, while Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute expects its students and researchers to gain opportunities to validate academic advances in production environments, connecting early-stage research with manufacturing requirements.
Stanford University’s participation will build on its existing research relationship with Applied Materials, providing students and researchers with additional access to industrial equipment and technical specialists. UCLA Samueli School of Engineering will also contribute semiconductor research expertise while supporting the development of future engineers.
Applied Materials expects additional companies and research organisations to join EPIC over time, expanding participation in collaborative semiconductor research and manufacturing development.
