UC Berkeley researchers will soon be able to take their semiconductor research to industry scale at a new Silicon Valley facility, helping them bring their innovations to market in the age of AI.
The collaboration is a “natural evolution” of a four-decade relationship with semiconductor and display equipment company Applied Materials and may yield research funding in the future, according to an email from Julia Zolinsky, Senior Director of Development & Corporate Partnerships at UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering.
The facility, located in Sunnyvale, is the Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization Center, which Applied Materials describes as “the world’s largest and most advanced facility for collaborative semiconductor process technology and manufacturing equipment (research and development).” The EPIC Center will open later this year and has also announced partnerships with Arizona State University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Stanford University. The center will also partner with major tech companies like Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Semiconductors are materials that can both block or carry the flow of electricity, making them essential for circuits and electronic devices ranging from smartphones to satellites. UC Berkeley researchers have been responsible for developing numerous key semiconductor innovations used in many digital devices today.
Today, semiconductor development continues to advance as researchers pursue new ways to improve semiconductor designs and solve existing problems, including exploring new materials and researching ways to make semiconductors more energy-efficient.
“The goal is to actually get these materials to be at the quality, at the scale so that it can be commercially viable one day,” said UC Berkeley materials science and engineering professor Zakaria Al Balushi. “To do that, you really need to partner with industry, because they know a lot of the challenges associated with integration and scaling, and they have that kind of infrastructure that typically an academic institution does not have access to.”
As an example of what the collaboration might look like, Al Balushi says he might send student researchers in his lab to the EPIC center to access their specialized infrastructure, opening the door for possible faculty and student findings to be scaled in the commercial setting of the EPIC center.
These innovations are especially pertinent at a time when AI, which will benefit from semiconductor research, is in high demand. Al Balushi hopes improved semiconductor technology can make AI more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly in the near future as well.
“Few institutions have shaped modern chipmaking as profoundly as UC Berkeley,” said Prabu Raja, president of the Semiconductor Products Group at Applied Materials, in a Tuesday press release announcing the collaboration. “Expanding our research collaboration at the EPIC Center strengthens the lab-to-fab innovation pipeline and gives us a powerful platform for developing the semiconductor talent the industry will depend on for decades to come.”