应用材料启用50亿美元EPIC研发中心，台积电三星等入驻

On 12 October, Applied Materials unveiled a multibillion-dollar research facility in Sunnyvale, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley . The company first announced in 2023 plans to invest US $4 billion in its Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC) Center, but now says it will invest even more: about $5 billion. The boost is part of a wider growth in private investment that is both enlarging the U.S. semiconductor R&D sector and making it more complex. The EPIC announcement follows others, in August, by two semiconductor firms. Memory chipmaker Micron disclosed that it would invest $10 billion over 10 years at its Boise, Idaho, memory research lab, and SK Hynix said it will spend $4 billion on an advanced packaging facility in West Lafayette, Ind. (Neither of those companies responded to IEEE Spectrum ’s questions about how much of those funds would be for R&D.) The U.S. federal government has encouraged investment in U.S. semiconductor research by chip giants based in friendly nations, such as TSMC and Samsung. It has also enacted tariffs on foreign components and put some of its own money into faltering domestic chip companies including Intel . But the real motive behind today’s wave of private investment, according to some analysts and executives, is that companies anticipate enormous profits from feeding the current AI frenzy. “The best explanation is probably not about policy or politics and probably more about a big jump in revenue growth driven by AI demand,” says Chris Miller of Tufts University, and author of the book Chip War . AI Money, Tools Accelerate Chipmaking Applied Materials’ chief strategy officer Tristan Holtam agrees: “It’s really all about AI.” The firm estimates that the top 10 semiconductor companies’ revenue has grown about 150 percent since 2021 thanks to AI demand, and they have in turn raised their investment in R&D by 67 percent, he says. Those top semiconductor companies are collectively investing $67 billion this

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