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The Biden White House announced that it is investing $825 million in Albany, New York, to build the flagship National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) facility. NSTC is America’s premier research and development center dedicated to supporting innovations in semiconductor technology, developing a skilled workforce to support these new developments, and collaborating with the private sector and academia. The US Department of Commerce says the Albany, New York site will focus on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography – technology for manufacturing the most advanced nodes needed for the next generation of chips and processors.

NSTC’s first facility, to be called the CHIPS for America Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) Accelerator, will take shape at the Albany NanoTech Complex — a high-tech site with more than 1.65 million square feet of space — operated by the non-profit Center of New York for Research, Economic Advancement, Technology, Engineering and Science (NY CREATES). As the name suggests, this development is funded by CHIPS and the Law of Sciencewhich is America’s largest investment in its semiconductor industry in the last 28 years combined.

“With this first proposed flagship facility, CHIPS for America provides access to cutting-edge research and tools for NSTC, and its launch is a key milestone in ensuring that the United States remains a world leader in semiconductor innovation and R&D,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

Raimondo states that “the research and development component of the CHIPS and Science Act is fundamental to our long-term national security and to ensuring that the US remains the most technologically competitive place on earth. Thanks to President Biden and Vice President Harris, we’re not only making the world’s most advanced semiconductors; we are building a resilient ecosystem that will power everything from smartphones to advanced AI, saving US national security and keeping America competitive for decades to come.”

EUV technology allows companies to overcome the limits of Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors on an integrated chip doubles every year. Since the latest processors have already reached over 100 billion transistors on a single chip, we need new advances in EUV lithography to allow us to pack even more transistors into the same amount of space.

Currently, ASML, based in the Netherlands, is the only company in the world that manufactures the High-NA EUV machines required to produce the latest generation of chips. As the U.S. seeks to strengthen its semiconductor supply chain, it needs domestic technologies, materials and companies that will enable it to secure its sources of chips — from mining the rare earth metals needed to produce the high-purity silicon needed for manufacturing semiconductor wafers to the machines needed to manufacture the most advanced processors. Although it will take years, perhaps even decades, to achieve this, the establishment of this research facility is a step in the right direction.