4 Chip Makers, New York to Team Up on Research
Four of the world’s largest computer chip makers and New York state said Monday that they would spend $600 million over the next five years on a research, education and economic development project focused on creating the next generation of computer microchips while limiting costs.
The project will get $200 million in funding and equipment from Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp., Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Infineon Technologies of Germany and Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology Inc. The state is contributing $180 million. More than $200 million is coming from several companies that provide the materials and equipment used to make semiconductors.
Analysts say such collaboration is needed in the industry with research and development costs skyrocketing in recent years because of advancements in the speed and intricacy of semiconductors.
“Chip companies have continued to make things smaller and faster, and it gets increasingly more difficult to do this,” said Bob Johnson, an analyst with market research firm Gartner.
Work will take place at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University at Albany. Organizers expect more than 500 researchers, engineers and others to be involved in the project, dubbed Invent. More than 300 positions will be on the State University of New York campus, said Alain Kaloyeros, president of Albany Nanotech, a university-affiliated center for nanotechnology research and development funded by the state and the private sector.
Nanotechnology is the science of working at the atomic and molecular levels -- at scales, for example, that are about 1/100,000th the diameter of a human hair. Invent Research will focus on lithography, the use of light to map the circuitry of computer chips, Kaloyeros said.
Kaloyeros said that although private firms have funded university research in such places as Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas, the Invent project is the first to combine public and private investment on such a research and development initiative.
The state, in an effort to transform an area dependent on government bureaucracy and rust-belt industry into another Silicon Valley, already has invested more than $500 million in the Albany Nanotech campus.
Sematech, a consortium of nine of the world’s largest chip makers, is building a $400-million research center here, and Tokyo Electron Ltd., a maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, built a $300-million facility next door.
Absent from the table is Intel Corp. Intel’s market share of the highly competitive x86 microprocessor market is about 80% of worldwide sales by unit volume and 90% by revenue.
