Applied Materials, Inc. today unveiled its Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC) Center, a $5 billion capital investment* to build the world’s largest facility dedicated to collaborative semiconductor process technology and manufacturing equipment R&D. Inside the EPIC Center, leading chipmakers, systems companies, equipment partners and university researchers will work side by side with Applied’s scientists and engineers to accelerate the pace of chip innovation for the AI era. “As AI infrastructure scales, the demands of high-performance computing are driving unprecedented complexity across the chipmaking roadmap,” said Gary Dickerson, President and CEO of Applied Materials. “To win the race for AI leadership, our industry must rethink and re-engineer how we collaborate to develop and commercialize the next generation of semiconductor technologies. At EPIC, the world’s leading chipmakers, system designers, equipment partners and researchers will work side by side with our teams to accelerate the path from breakthrough materials innovation to high-volume manufacturing faster than ever before.” Purpose-Built to Accelerate Innovation and Commercialization Unveiled today at Applied’s Sunnyvale, California, campus, the EPIC Center represents one of the most complex R&D construction projects in the world. The 600,000-square-foot structure houses nearly four acres of advanced cleanroom space and required more than six million construction hours to complete. Its foundation holds enough concrete to fill 34 Olympic-sized swimming pools, and its steel-reinforced structure holds enough steel to build two Eiffel Towers. Thirty-four roof trusses cover the cleanrooms, each spanning nearly 300 feet in length and weighing as much as 12 school buses. EPIC is designed to reinvent the R&D model the industry has relied on for decades. In the traditional model, foundational materials research happens in one environment, equipment and process development in another, and process integration and pilot production in a third, with a careful handoff at every phase. The EPIC Center is designed to remove these handoffs, putting the people who invent the materials, build the equipment, and make the chips together in a state-of-the-art facility purpose-built for commercialization. EPIC is founded on a simple conviction: the technologies the AI era demands are too complex and too consequential for any one company to invent alone. The EPIC Center opens with a founding roster that spans the AI technology stack. Founding partners TSMC, Intel, Samsung Electronics, Micron and SK hynix are joined by innovation partners Broadcom, Advantest, SCREEN, KIOXIA, and Besi; and by research partners Arizona State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. Each partner brings its own roadmap challenges and engineers into the facility, working in tight, secure learning cycles alongside Applied teams. Over time, additional companies and organizations are expected to join the EPIC ecosystem. Leaders from many of the EPIC Center partner companies attended the unveiling event, getting a first glimpse inside the facility. The day started with a summit hosted by Dr. Prabu Raja, President of the Semiconductor Products Group at Applied Materials, where R&D leaders from top semiconductor design, manufacturing and equipment companies discussed key challenges facing growth and progress in the global chip industry. “Materials innovation has outgrown serial development – 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,” said Dr. Prabu Raja. “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 en