Applied Materials (AMAT), the world's No. 1 semiconductor equipment company, is building its research and development (R&D) base, the "EPIC Center," in Silicon Valley, and said on the 10th (local time) that SK hynix and Micron Technology of the United States will join as founding partners of the EPIC Center.
Set to begin operations this year, the EPIC Center is an R&D facility where engineers from semiconductor manufacturing corporations conduct joint research with equipment developers. It is designed to significantly accelerate the commercialization timeline of semiconductor technology compared with the conventional approach in which manufacturers purchase equipment after the equipment makers finish development.
SK hynix researchers plan to be stationed at the EPIC Center and focus on advanced 3D packaging at the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) level.
Kwak Noh-jung, SK hynix chief executive officer (CEO), said, "One of the biggest obstacles to AI advancement is that the gap between memory speed and processor development is widening," and added, "By collaborating with Applied Materials at the EPIC Center, we hope to provide an innovation roadmap that enables next-generation memory solutions optimized for AI."
Samsung Electronics previously said last month that it would also join the EPIC Center and carry out R&D including materials engineering innovations to advance miniaturization of advanced nodes, next-generation memory architectures, and accelerated 3D integration.