How long before this flounders, if it even gets off the ground?
https://www.wsj.com/tech/new-york-joins-ibm-micron-in-10-billion-chip-research-complex-475437b3
By: Asa Fitch and Jimmy Vielkind
Updated Dec. 11, 2023 12:26 pm ET
New York state is joining chip companies to invest $10 billion in a semiconductor research facility near the University at Albany that is set to bring advanced chip-making equipment to the state.
NY Creates, a nonprofit that oversees the Albany NanoTech Complex where the facility is to be built, will coordinate its construction. It will also use state funds to acquire chip-making equipment from ASML Holding, a Dutch company whose machines can cost hundreds of millions of dollars and are key to making the most advanced chips possible.
Once the machinery is installed, the project and its partners will begin work on next-generation chip manufacturing there, according to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office. The partners include tech giant IBM, memory manufacturer Micron Technology, as well as chip-manufacturing equipment makers Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron.
The Albany complex has produced numerous successful chip research efforts over the years but has also had its stumbles.
A contracting scandal in 2016 led to the resignation of its founding leader, and prompted an Austrian company to abandon plans to partner with the state on a chip factory in Utica. A consortium that was researching whether chips could be made on larger wafers of silicon collapsed in 2017.
Some chip research consortia have also failed to meet their ambitions, including one called Sematech, which was formed in the 1980s to help the U.S. chip industry compete against Japanese rivals.
The expansion could help New York’s bid to be designated a research hub under last year’s $53 billion Chips Act. That legislation included $11 billion for a National Semiconductor Technology Center to foster domestic chip research and development.
Expanding domestic chip manufacturing and research has become a federal and state-level priority in recent years as concern grows in the U.S. over China’s expanding grasp over the industry. Chips are increasingly seen as a crux of geopolitical power, underlying advanced we-pons for militaries and sophisticated artificial-intelligence systems.
ASML’s advanced machines use lasers and droplets of tin in a complex process to imprint the outlines of transistors on silicon. The machine to be installed in Albany is the next generation of these systems, which aren’t expected to be used in commercial chip production until 2025.
The project at the Albany complex, which began in the 1990s and has been expanded in several stages since, would create 700 jobs and bring in at least $9 billion of private money, Hochul’s office said. New York is investing $1 billion to buy the ASML equipment and construct a building with 50,000 square feet of chip-manufacturing space. Construction is expected to take about two years.
Completing the project may not be simple. Manufacturing projects are struggling to find all the workers they need in many cases. The recent push to increase domestic chip production, fueled by billions of dollars in public incentives, could worsen the shortage.
The Semiconductor Industry Association projects that more than half of the roughly 115,000 new positions expected to be created by the end of the decade could go unfilled.
As the U.S. offers manufacturing incentives through legislation such as the Chips Act, the federal government has also sought to limit Beijing’s access to the most sophisticated AI chips and chip-making equipment through several rounds of tightened export controls.
Separately Monday, the Biden administration disclosed its first allocation of funds under the Chips Act with a $35 million grant to BAE Systems
of the U.K. to boost chip production for military aircraft at the Nashua, N.H., plant.
The announcement comes as the administration faces political pressure to highlight the benefits of President Biden’s big-ticket economic policies, amid sagging voter support for his performance. The government said the pace of awards will accelerate in the first half of next year.
New York is home to a number of large chip factories, including ones operated by GlobalFoundries, ON Semiconductor and Wolfspeed. Micron is planning to invest up to $100 billion in a large factory near Syracuse that it is hoping to get funding for through the Chips Act. State officials also have offered incentives for the manufacturing facilities.