Applied Materials officially opened its Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC) Center in Silicon Valley on October 12. The $5 billion commitment covers construction and equipment installation, with further annual investment expected. The facility brings Applied’s engineers together with chipmakers, universities and other equipment suppliers to develop future semiconductor technologies in one place.
Chief executive Gary Dickerson told EE Times the company is working four generations ahead, and that whoever brings innovations to market fastest will win. The problem EPIC targets is a clock mismatch: AI processors now develop on annual cycles, while new semiconductor materials have historically taken eight to 12 years to reach production.
Intel has recently joined TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron as a founding partner, which means the five leading chipmakers are all on the platform, according to Dickerson. Broadcom has also joined, bringing a custom AI silicon designer’s perspective. Competing customers are kept apart through segmented, firewalled innovation teams and controlled physical access.
For Applied Materials the commercial logic is explicit. Dickerson described EPIC as an accelerator of the company’s design wins: being present when customers define new architectures improves the chance its equipment is written into future manufacturing flows, in areas from hybrid bonding and high-bandwidth memory to backside power delivery.