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Applied Materials, Inc., the leader in materials engineering for the semiconductor industry, announced it is working with Intel Corporation to accelerate development of chipmaking innovations for next-generation transistors, interconnects and advanced packaging technologies. The collaboration will bring together cutting-edge capabilities from Applied’s EPIC Center in Silicon Valley and Intel’s R&D campus in Hillsboro, Oregon to shorten time-to-market of advanced semiconductor technologies essential to AI computing.
“Applied and Intel share a decades-long history of deep collaboration focused on pushing the boundaries of materials engineering to advance the semiconductor roadmap,” said Gary Dickerson, President and CEO of Applied Materials. “Bringing our teams together at the EPIC Center will deepen that partnership and accelerate the transistor, interconnect and packaging innovations needed to drive the future of AI computing.”
“The demand for AI computing is driving the need for major advances in performance, power efficiency, and packaging. Intel is focused on delivering those innovations and doing it in close collaboration with partners across the ecosystem,” said Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel. “Applied Materials is an important partner, and we look forward to expanding our work together at the EPIC Center to help accelerate the path from the lab to high-volume manufacturing in the United States.”
Teams from Applied Materials and Intel are collaborating on next-generation materials, process technologies and device architectures for advanced logic nodes targeting AI workloads, and will continue this work at the EPIC Center. The collaboration spans both front-end and back-end-of-line advancements, including interconnect scaling. The collaboration also involves development of advanced packaging technologies for Foveros-based 3D stacking, supporting higher interconnect density, improved power delivery, and enhanced thermal performance for high-performance compute platforms designed to accelerate emerging agentic AI workloads.
“With the chipmaking roadmap becoming more complex at each process node, accelerating innovations in semiconductor devices, interconnects and packaging requires deeper collaboration across R&D and manufacturing,” said Dr. Prabu Raja, President of the Semiconductor Products Group at Applied Materials. “We look forward to working closely with Intel as a founding partner of the EPIC Center to shorten development cycles and bring new technologies to market faster.”
“Accelerating our R&D to keep pace with the rapid buildout of AI infrastructure is critical to delivering the technology, manufacturing excellence and foundry services our customers expect from Intel Foundry,” said Naga Chandrasekaran, Executive Vice President, Chief Technology and Operations Officer and General Manager of Intel Foundry. “Applied Materials’ new EPIC Center provides an environment where our teams can collaborate even more closely and at higher velocity to accelerate materials development and process innovations.”
Applied’s new EPIC (Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization) Center in Silicon Valley, which is scheduled to 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.
