Feds to locate the nation’s ‘flagship’ microchip R&D center in NY

The Biden Administration plans to spend about $825 million to create a flagship national semiconductor R&D center in upstate New York, where the government-funded NanoTech Complex already exists.

The new R&D facility in Albany, NY will be home to the Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Accelerator project, which is being funded to advance leading-edge lithography research and adoption in the US.

EUV Lithography is essential for manufacturing smaller, faster, and more efficient integrated circuits and microchips. It involves transferring intricate patterns onto a semiconductor silicon wafer, which eventually forms the circuits that power all electronic devices.

As the semiconductor industry pushes the limits of Moore’s Law, EUV lithography has emerged as a critical technology to enable the high-volume production of transistors beyond 7 nanometers (nm), something that was previously unattainable. By comparison, a typical human hair is roughly 80,000nm to 100,000nm thick, and a DNA molecule is around 2.5nm.

The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) said access to EUV lithography R&D is essential to meet three primary goals: 1) extend US technology leadership, 2) reduce the time and cost to prototype, and 3) build and sustain a semiconductor workforce ecosystem.

The new R&D center represents a key milestone “in ensuring the United States remains a global leader in innovation and semiconductor research and development,” Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a statement.

Anish Koshy, a Parthenon Principal at consultancy Ernst & Young LLP, said the center represents a strategic investment in both technology and talent.

“At the heart of this facility is advanced EUV technology, a cornerstone in producing the next generation of high-performance microchips essential for applications from AI to advanced computing,” Koshy said. “EUV technology has been largely concentrated outside of the US and the hope is that having this technology on US soil, combined with the collaborative research environment, will help American companies maintain their edge in designing next-generation chips.”

The US EUV effort is a political response to China making a concerted effort to be the world leader in the chip design and manufacturing space, even though the US and Europe have put restrictions on the one primary supplier of EUV technology — ASML, according to Jack Gold, principal analyst for J. Gold Associates.

ASML Holding N.V. is a Dutch multinational corporation that develops and manufactures of photolithography machines which are used to produce computer chips. As of 2023, it is the largest supplier for the semiconductor industry and the sole supplier in the world of EUV photolithography machines.

“Even with the export controls, its expected China will be able to create a competitive system in the next few years,” Gold said. “So, it’s critical that the US have a competitive R&D program in place to stimulate local production and stay ahead in this critical technology, while also potentially creating US suppliers that can produce these machines that can sell for hundreds of millions of dollars each.”

Another semiconductor expert, who asked not to be named, said EUV technology only affects a small number of companies, such as TSMC, Intel, Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron. “That’s really it,” he said.

Many more companies, however, will benefit indirectly, including fabless chip makers such as NVIDIA and AMD; networking providers such as Broadcom; wireless providers such as Qualcomm and Mediatek; and cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

Even Internet service and equipment providers such as Meta and Oracle, and enterprise hardware makers such as Cisco and Juniper, could benefit from the new R&D center’s potential innovations, the expert said.

“There is an entire ecosystem that we expect will get excited about having the Accelerator onshore — and very little of this ecosystem exists in the USA today, so much of this will be net new job creation,” he said. “There are obvious national security implications in getting more Americans working on EUV challenges, with benefits to [the Department of Defense] from a resiliency perspective.”

Funded by the CHIPS Act to reshore semiconductor manufacturing, the new research center’s aim is to unite researchers nationwide to accelerate innovation in the field. The Department of Commerce and the National Center for the Advancement of Semiconductor Technology (Natcast), will oversee the facility. Natcast was created under the CHIPS Act as a non-profit entity designated to operate the NSTC.

The new center will provide access to “cutting-edge research and tools” to the NSTC, which was just opened in Albany’s NY CREATES’ NanoTech Complex; that complex opened last year.

NY CREATES

Through public-private partnerships, mega corporations from the semiconductor industry and others such as IBM, Micron, Applied Materials, and Tokyo Electron helped establish the facilities at the NanoTech Complex. 

In August 2022, Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, allocating $52.7 billion to the Department of Commerce for the CHIPS for America program to enhance U.S. semiconductor research, development, and manufacturing. About $11 billion of that CHIPS funding went toward establishing several research centers, including the NSTC and the Nanotech complex in Albany.

With the CHIPS Act spurring them on, chip makers such as Intel, Samsung, Micron, TSMC, and Texas Instruments are already building or planning a number of new US chip fabrication plants. (Qualcomm, in partnership with GlobalFoundries, also said it would invest $4.2 billion to double chip production in its Malta, NY facility.)

To date, however, CHIPS Act funding has only been allocated, not distributed. There have also been setbacks on fabrication plant construction as workers to build and staff the plants are in short supply.

NY CREATES operates a complex with 150,000 square feet of cleanroom space (and another 50,000 square feet of space under construction) staffed by 2,750 scientists, engineers and other staffers. The R&D facility is in partnership with more than 200 industry, academic and international development facilities around the globe.

Raimondo said the CHIPS Act is building “a resilient ecosystem that will power everything from smartphones to advanced AI, safeguarding US national security and keeping America competitive for decades to come.”

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted critical gaps in the semiconductor supply chain as imports to the US and other nations ground to a halt, affecting the production of everything with electronics, from smart phones to cars.

NY CREATES is an Albany-based, non-profit semiconductor R&D facility that works with the National Institute for Industry and Career Advancement (NIICA). NIICA’s focus is on building the nation’s talent pipeline in semiconductor and advanced manufacturing industries. It also created the Semiconductor and Advanced Manufacturing Technician Apprenticeship Program (SAM-TAP).

NY CREATES has been operating an apprenticeship program: apprentices get hands-on training while also attending courses at local colleges to advance their careers.

“By supporting breakthrough EUV research and fostering a collaborative ecosystem, this facility will not only drive semiconductor innovation, but also address key challenges in supply chain resilience and workforce development, while maintaining U.S. technological leadership,” EY’s Koshy said.