Aug. 17 (UPI) — The Biden administration announced Friday it will invest $1.6 billion in Texas Instruments’ efforts to bolster U.S. manufacturing capacity for “mature node” semiconductors deemed critical for many everyday applications.
The Dallas-based tech manufacturer and the Commerce Department announced that direct funding from CHIPS and the Science Act will go toward building three new semiconductor manufacturing projects, including two currently underway in Sherman, Texas, and one in Lehi, Utah.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Texas Instruments CEO Habib Iran said the new fab would address an ongoing and chronic shortage of the workhorse 300mm wafer chips, which are considered a “mature node” because they are no longer cutting-edge technology but are still essential for thousands of applications that are core to many U.S. economic sectors.
The CHIPS Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, was intended to provide incentives for companies to promote U.S.-based supply chains as well as domestic manufacturing of semiconductor chips, which are critical to the U.S. economy and national security.
“During the pandemic, shortages of current generation and mature node chips have fueled inflation and made our country less secure,” Raimondo said in a statement.
“This investment proposed by the Biden-Harris Administration in TI, a global leader in current generation and mature node chip manufacturing, will help secure the supply chain for these fundamental semiconductors used in every sector of the U.S. economy and create thousands of jobs in Texas and Utah.”
Mature node semiconductors have not received as much attention as advanced node semiconductors, but they are widespread throughout the global economy in applications such as communications equipment, computing, automotive, memory and storage, and cloud equipment.
The shortage of mature node chipsets in the 22-75 nanometer range remains largely unmet, despite predictions that it will account for approximately 24% of the total unmet demand for semiconductor chips by 2027.
The shortage of these chips in the U.S. during and after the COVID-19 pandemic has been felt keenly by the auto industry, forcing some auto manufacturing plants to temporarily close due to a lack of chips to build vehicles.
Ilan said TI aims to expand its 300mm manufacturing operations in the United States by more than 95 percent by 2030, providing the U.S. with “geopolitically credible” large-scale production capacity over the next few years.
