Federal/Private Partnership to Develop Extreme U-V Lithography

On Thursday, September 11, semiconductor manufacturers Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Motorola announced that they had reached a historic agreement to partner with Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, and Berkeley National Laboratories to create a new Limited Liability Company (LLC) to manufacture extreme ultra-violet (EUV) lithography computer chips that are potentially 100 times more powerful than today's standard computer chips.

The new organization, christened EUV-LLC, will invest upwards of $250 million in private funding over the next three years to develop extreme ultraviolet lithography for commercial manufacturing of computer chips. The LLC project represents the largest investment ever made by a private industry in a Department of Energy research project. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (Pleasanton), whose Congressional District is host to both the University of California-operated Lawrence Livermore laboratory, hailed the pact as the "most significant technological collaboration and financial investment partnership enacted between the powerhouses of the Laser Valley and the Silicon Valley that has ever been announced." The technology's development was begun at California's national labs, having been supported from the inertial confinement fusion account and then by the Technology Transfer Initiative before being embraced by the consortium.

Volume 4, Bulletin 31 -- September 18, 1997