Now that the U.S. government has finally settled the matter of whether it would be providing subsidies to entice chip fabs to setup shop within the U.S., those fabs and chip makers are starting to hammer out their domestic investment plans. Of all of the proposals revealed so far, Micron's new proposal stands to be the most ambitious. Last week the company announced plans to build the largest chip production complex in the history of the U.S. in central New York state. The plan will span 20 years of construction and upgrades, with a total price tag expected to hit around $100 billion by the time Micron is finished in the 2040s. 

Micron's new site near Clay, New York, will not only be the company's largest campus ever built, but will also be the largest chip fab in the USA. The new Micron campus will produce DRAM using leading-edge process technologies and is expected to eventually include four 600,000 feet2 (55,700 meters2) clean rooms. Which, to provide some context, is roughly eight-times the clean room space of GlobalFoundries' Fab 8. The new fab complex will complement Micron's already announced campus near Boise, Idaho, that is expected to start coming online starting in 2025. Both sites will be instrumental to meet Micron's goal to produce 40% of its DRAM in the U.S. over the next decade.

According to Micron, the company's investments in its New York production facility will total $100 billion when fully built, and it will create some 9,000 Micron jobs along with some 41,000 indirect jobs. The first phase of the Clay, New York, project is expected to cost Micron around $20 billion in total over the rest of this decade. The DRAM maker expects to get $5.5 billion in incentives from the state of New York over the life of the project, as well as federal grants and tax credits from the CHIPS and Science Act. In addition, Micron and the state of New York will also invest $500 million over the next 20+ years in community and workforce development.

Micron plans to start site preparation work in 2023 and start construction in 2024. The facility ramp up is set to begin in the second half of the decade based on industry demand for DRAM devices.

Broadly speaking, fab complexes with eye-popping price tags are quickly becoming the norm in the fab industry as the cost of building and equipping successive generations of fabs continues to balloon. And while Micron is not the first company to plan for a twelve digit price tag for a new fab complex (Intel's new fab complex in Ohio is officially expected to cost around $100 billion when completed), Micron's announcement is notable in that unlike Intel and TSMC, Micron isn't a logic producer. So the company's $100 billion plans are entirely for memory, a relatively bold commitment for a conservative company that's competing in the tech industry's classic commodity market.

Bearing in mind that the new fab in in Onondaga County, New York, is not set to come online until the later half of the decade, it is too early for Micro to reveal which process technologies and types of products it will produce. The only thing that the company says is that this will be a leading-edge facility that will produce advanced DRAM products (think 64Gb DDR5 chips, DDR6 DRAMs, next-generation HBM, etc.) using EUV-enabled production nodes.

"Micron will leverage the diverse, highly educated and skilled talent in New York as we look to build our workforce in the Empire State," said Sanjay Mehrotra, chief executive of Micron. "This historic leading-edge memory megafab in Central New York will deliver benefits beyond the semiconductor industry by strengthening U.S. technology leadership as well as economic and national security, driving American innovation and competitiveness for decades to come."

Source: Micron

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  • Techie2 - Monday, October 10, 2022 - link

    Gotz to get me Mo Money from the Biden regime.
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - link

    Rather sensible if you consider how easy it would be to cut the United States off from chip suppliers as lots of production is in places that the US sorts seem to consider unfriendly (China) or at risk of being exploded (Taiwan), but I do understand that US residents are quite caught up in the swirl of making everything about party politics. Its quite comical to watch how easily US folk are led around by their noses from various media sources such as the Aussies (Murdochs, I think they are) that own Fox News and stir up discontent to get viewership and advert money as a result. But carry on over there.
  • RedGreenBlue - Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - link

    I’m an American and you have no idea how accurate you statement is from what people have said on AT comments recently. I don’t support the destruction of property, but the people criticizing the CHIPS Act have no clue how serious a threat it is to national and global security if China invaded Taiwan and TSMC DIDN’T blow up their own fab (no more specifics). It’s the biggest reason China wants to invade, because they’re 2-4 generations behind or 5-10 years behind. They just want to take over TSMC’s fabs.
  • RedGreenBlue - Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - link

    The world economy would basically stop.
  • RedGreenBlue - Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - link

    I’d rather see an ASML EUV machine in smitherines than in the hands of Russia or China. And if it ends up with one, they’ll pass it to the other or run it for the other.
  • Diogene7 - Friday, October 14, 2022 - link

    I wish that a disruptive investment would be done for High Volume Manufacturing (HVM) of Non Volatile Memory (NVM) 64Gbit or higher MRAM chips instead of volatile DRAM memory.

    I believe that NVM Memory like MRAM, SOT-MRAM,… would enable so many new disruptive use cases, especially in Internet of Things (IoT) devices, Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics,…

    Unfortunately like emerging Electric Vehicules (EV) competing with Internal Combustion Engine (ICE), there is a likely a need for incentives to make emerging NVM memories cost competitive with volatile DRAM…

    I also wish TSMC would be given incentives to manufacture NVM MRAM wich would push other memory manufacturers to follow-up…
  • block2 - Monday, October 24, 2022 - link

    Whew, remembered my password from when anand was in high school.
    This factory will be just 7-10 miles east of my house, can see the area from drone at my house.

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