TSMC Joins Applied Materials at $5B Silicon Valley Hub to Crack the 3D Transistor Wall Slowing Down Advanced AI Chips

Applied Materials partners with TSMC in a $5 billion EPIC Center to advance semiconductor technologies for AI-driven innovation and efficiency.

Applied Materials and TSMC Partner at the EPIC Center to Accelerate AI Scaling

Press Release: Building on more than 30 years of collaboration, Applied Materials, Inc., today announced an innovation partnership with TSMC to accelerate the development and commercialization of semiconductor technologies required for the next era of AI. Working together at Applied’s EPIC Center in Silicon Valley, the companies will co-innovate to advance materials engineering, equipment innovation, and process integration technologies designed to deliver energy-efficient performance from the data center to the edge.

“Applied and TSMC share a long history of deep collaboration built on trust and a shared commitment to advancing innovation at the leading edge of semiconductor technology,” said Gary Dickerson, President and CEO of Applied Materials. “By bringing our teams together at the EPIC Center, we are strengthening that partnership and accelerating the development of technologies to address the unprecedented complexity driving the chipmaking roadmap.”

“As semiconductor device architectures evolve with each new generation, the demands on materials engineering and process integration continue to increase,” said Dr. Y.J. Mii, Executive Vice President and Co-Chief Operating Officer at TSMC. “Meeting the challenges of AI at a global scale requires industry-wide collaboration. Applied Materials’ EPIC Center provides an ideal environment to accelerate equipment and process readiness for next-generation technologies.”

Through the EPIC Center engagement, Applied and TSMC will collaborate on materials engineering innovations targeting the most critical challenges facing advanced logic scaling. Areas of focus include:

• Process technologies that enable continuous power, performance, and area improvements across leading-edge logic nodes, addressing the growing demands of AI and high-performance computing
• New materials and next-generation manufacturing equipment enabling precise formation of increasingly complex 3D transistor and interconnect structures 
• Advanced process integration approaches that improve yield, variability control, and reliability as devices move toward vertically stacked and highly scaled architectures

Applied’s new, $5 billion* EPIC Center in Silicon Valley represents the largest-ever U.S. investment in advanced semiconductor equipment R&D. The center, which will be operationally ready this year, is designed from the ground up to dramatically reduce the time it takes to commercialize breakthrough technologies from early-stage research to full-scale manufacturing.

For chipmakers, the EPIC Center will provide earlier access to Applied’s R&D portfolio, faster cycles of learning, and accelerated transfer of next-generation technologies into high-volume manufacturing, within a secure collaborative environment. In addition, the co-innovation programs at the EPIC Center will provide Applied with greater multi-node visibility to guide R&D investments while increasing R&D productivity and value sharing.

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