Semiconductor industry in the United States

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

The development of the modern semiconductor industry accelerated at Bell Labs in New Jersey. In 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain produced the first working transistor, with William Shockley subsequently developing the junction transistor. Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley received the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their research on semiconductors and discovery of the transistor effect.^[5]

In 1956, Shockley established Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California, recruiting engineers and scientists including Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. Eight employees left Shockley in 1957 to establish Fairchild Semiconductor. Fairchild became a major center of semiconductor development and produced numerous spin-off companies, helping establish the technological and entrepreneurial ecosystem that became known as Silicon Valley.^[6]

In 1958, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments demonstrated an early working integrated circuit.^[7] The following year, Noyce at Fairchild developed a practical monolithic integrated circuit using Jean Hoerni's planar process, an approach that became fundamental to integrated-circuit manufacturing.^[8] Noyce and Moore left Fairchild to establish Intel in 1968. Intel introduced the 4004 microprocessor in 1971, helping expand semiconductor applications in computing.^[9]

In 1978, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched the VLSI Project to advance very-large-scale integration (VLSI) design and fabrication. The program helped spread the Mead–Conway VLSI design methodology and supported university research that contributed to early reduced instruction set computer (RISC) processors, including the Berkeley RISC project.^[10] DARPA also funded MOSIS, launched in 1981 to provide researchers with low-cost access to semiconductor fabrication.^[11]

During the 1980s, competition from Japanese semiconductor manufacturers increased substantially. Japan surpassed the United States as the largest semiconductor producer in 1986, and in 1987 U.S. semiconductor manufacturers and the federal government established SEMATECH to conduct collaborative semiconductor manufacturing research.^[12]

The U.S. semiconductor industry also influenced the development of semiconductor manufacturing in Taiwan. In 1976, Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) signed a technology-transfer and licensing agreement with the U.S. based RCA Corporation, sending engineers to the United States for training and subsequently establishing an integrated-circuit production line in Taiwan.^[13] ITRI spun off United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) in 1980.^[14] Separately, Morris Chang, following a long career at Texas Instruments, became president of ITRI in 1985 and founded TSMC in 1987, developing the dedicated semiconductor foundry business model.^[15]

As semiconductor production became increasingly globalized, a growing share of fabrication moved to East Asia while U.S. companies retained major positions in design, equipment, software, and research. By 2022, the U.S. share of worldwide semiconductor manufacturing capacity had declined to about 10%.^[16]

The U.S. semiconductor industry includes integrated device manufacturers, fabless semiconductor companies, foundries, semiconductor equipment manufacturers, materials suppliers, and electronic design automation companies. Major integrated device manufacturers include Intel, Micron Technology, and Texas Instruments, while major fabless companies include AMD, Broadcom, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. GlobalFoundries operates as a major U.S. based semiconductor foundry.^[17]

The United States is also a major center for semiconductor manufacturing equipment and design software. Applied Materials, KLA, and Lam Research manufacture equipment used in semiconductor fabrication, while Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys are major developers of electronic design automation software. These sectors form part of a wider ecosystem that also includes semiconductor materials, packaging, testing, intellectual property, and university research.^[18]

Semiconductor fabrication in the United States is distributed across several regional centers, including facilities in Arizona, California, Idaho, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Texas. In addition to U.S. headquartered manufacturers, foreign semiconductor companies have established or expanded manufacturing operations in the country, including TSMC and Samsung Electronics.^[19]

Investment in domestic fabrication increased during the 2020s, including new and expanded facilities for logic, memory, analog semiconductors, semiconductor equipment, and advanced packaging. The expansion followed concerns about semiconductor supply chains and the decline in the U.S. share of global manufacturing capacity.^[20]

Semiconductor research in the United States is conducted by private companies, universities, research consortia, and government laboratories. The Semiconductor Research Corporation was established in 1982 to support university semiconductor research, while SEMATECH was established in 1987 as a public-private research consortium focused on semiconductor manufacturing.^[21]

The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 provided the United States Department of Commerce with $52.7 billion over five years for semiconductor manufacturing and research programs. This included $39 billion in manufacturing incentives and $11 billion for semiconductor research and development.^[22] Research programs established or expanded under the legislation include the National Semiconductor Technology Center, the National Advanced Packaging Manufacturing Program, semiconductor metrology research, and a Manufacturing USA institute.^[23]

• CHIPS and Science Act
• List of semiconductor occupations
• List of semiconductor fabrication plants
• National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Outline of semiconductors
• Semiconductor equipment sales leaders by year
• Semiconductor industry in China
• Semiconductor industry in Japan
• Semiconductor industry in South Korea
• Semiconductor industry in Taiwan