Center for Strategic and International Studies

"Only a small number of U.S. universities have on-site wafer fabrication facilities sufficiently sophisticated enough to enable students to gain hands-on chip-making experience in a factory environment...There is only one university site in the United States where the most advanced 300 mm manufacturing facilities are available: the State University of New York’s Albany Nanotech Complex, home of SUNY (Poly’s) College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. Upgrading a university fab even to 200 mm wafer size—a generation behind 300 mm—would cost $80 million initially and $80 million a year afterward, investments on a scale impossible for many academic institutions.

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