With chip fabs in the news, Intel recently opened its massive fab 52 to reporters at the Ocotillo campus in Chandler, Ariz., where the 2nm process node is being produced. It is a vast structure, and features the first of several monstrous EUV machines from Dutch-based ASML—the sole source of advanced EUV technology.
The length of the building is three football fields long. Many of the hundreds of steps required to apply or etch components to silicon wafers are automated and lightning fast. It was frankly hard to take it all in on a quick tour, although donning the protective gear was an education in itself, with a double layer of protection that can get uncomfortably warm.
More recently, I got a chance to visit two much smaller facilities in the Sacramento, Calif., area, including the secure defense-related Defense Microelectronics Activity (DMEA) lab. The other was a lab run by Micron. Both tours were arranged by the Greater Sacramento Economic Council, a group of polished professionals who work with CEOs and elected leaders in six counties and 16 interconnected towns and cities to further the area’s growth, which lately has included an acceleration in high tech capital spending and hiring.
DMEA is headed by Nicholas Martin, who serves as primary advisor to the Assistant Secretary of War for Sustainment. He’s probably the perfect guy to have in charge of a defense-related microelectronics lab, since he brings prior experience as a US Navy electronics technician and later received a PhD in electrical engineering from fabled UC Davis. He served two deployments on the USS John Stennis in the Middle East. He described how he once stayed awake more than two days aboard ship, bouncing around in waves and swells, as he rewired, by hand, a series of circular circuit boards used in a geolocation application. There were literally hundreds of wires and circuit pathways.
During his telling of the story, he showed us a similar set of boards with white wires blossoming like spaghetti from all directions that the DMEA later re-engineered to make all the wires solid state on a small board the size of a passport. It was an illustration of what DMEA is partly about: sustaining older systems for use with modern tech and capabilities--obviously something the newly-named Department of War would care about. I’d share a photo of the quick demo he gave, but cameras, smartphones, smartwatches and smart rings are not allowed in the DMEA facility, which sits in an ordinary office park in an unincorporated community at the end of parking lot with a high black fence surrounding the 1-story facility. Inside, many of the traditional DOD emblems and signs are still in place, but a few have been updated to “DoW,” Department of War.
Martin described the various testing facilities used at DMEA, including subjecting materials, including new SiC (Silicon Carbide) chips, to extreme temperatures, pressures and even radiation. The radiation lab was staffed on our tour by two engineers in lab coats who explained how they take various electronics components and subject them to radiation to see how they work afterwards. These can be components already in use by the military but also those from recognized defense suppliers (more than a 100 well known companies) who are likely working on advanced applications, including some used in space. According to DMEA’s web site, it is a gamma irradiation test facility, first established in 1997. Equipment and their components are exposed to radiation environments as varied as nuclear power plants onboard US Navy vessels to satellites in orbit.
For security reasons, Martin declined to say how DMEA compares to similar labs in other countries, like China or North Korea, but he was able to say that the US is well-prepared for the war effort related to electronics testing and sustainability.
Micron is actually doing similar work in its Sacramento-area lab in Folsom, but in a private setting operated by a publicly-traded company that is immensely careful about security, for obvious reasons involving competitiveness. Daniel Scobee, senior engineer, led a small group of us around a lab that is growing in size, both with equipment and personnel. The equipment includes enormous ovens that subject boards from Micron’s circuit board partners to extreme heat to be able to show how internal circuits will perform. Micron, of course, makes memory and was even able to show how the circuits look under microscopes after being subjected to extremes to show distortions or other obvious failures.
Micron also runs a data center on site that allows it to test drive its own memory components in actual high performance computing server racks. The racks are liquid cooled, with the ambient air outside the racks kept at a normal room temperature, even as Scobee opened one rack to demonstrate how noticeably hot the servers can get. (These kinds of heat variations are important to compare to memory, sensor and other components.) Other equipment in Micron’s lab allows a test engineer to funnel extreme heat using long flexible tubes to a specific component on a board--part of the approach to single out imperfections. High end computers in the lab are used to tabulate thousands of components to be able to analyze and share the findings.
My realization after visiting any fab or testing facility is often how complex the technology can be in a computer processor or other component. I’d argue that much of the public has no idea just how complicated or involved these processes can get, especially around demands for electricity and water. But the other reality is that companies like Micron, Intel and agencies like DMEA are working hard to make components work safely and completely, as intended, as an assurance to partners and customers, but also average users aboard ships and planes or at workplaces or homes.
I hope Micron, Intel and others can inspire more organizations to open up their labs to the public, especially lay people who don’t fully understand what is required to make a PC or a satellite or electric vehicle, much less a humanoid robot. Students at Sierra College in Rocklin, Calif., have a recognized mechatronics program with lab facilities, which offers a good model to start for other colleges that want to prepare tomorrow’s tech work force. With President Trump finding various ways to force domestic chip production largely through use of tariffs, it makes sense for taxpayers to see how domestic producers are provisioning sensors and other electronics: the oil of the modern era.