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UT Austin TIE NGMM Center

DARPA-Funded 3DHI Advanced Packaging Research Foundry at UT Austin

The Texas Institute for Electronics NGMM Center at UT Austin is the only advanced packaging plant in the world dedicated to 3D heterogeneous integration. The center is being equipped to run high-mix, low-volume production of advanced microelectronics that stack chips of different materials — silicon and non-silicon — into single packages, bridging the long-standing lab-to-fab gap that has constrained US prototyping of frontier microelectronics. DARPA's $840 million Next-Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing program award in July 2024 and approximately $552 million in earlier State of Texas funding combine to roughly $1.4 billion in committed 3DHI investment, making the TIE NGMM Center the single largest US federal investment in advanced packaging research at this scale.

The center matters at the AI-Industrial level for two reasons. The first is the production-bridge function. Advanced packaging — and 3D heterogeneous integration specifically — is the layer of the semiconductor stack that determines whether multiple chips of different process nodes and materials can be combined into single deployable systems. AI compute, autonomous platforms, orbital silicon, defense electronics, and the broader convergence's silicon needs increasingly depend on 3DHI capability that no commercial US foundry currently runs at the scale of frontier defense and dual-use applications. The TIE NGMM Center fills that gap. The second is the consortium structure. TIE's NGMM team includes 32 defense electronics and commercial semiconductor companies (AMD, Applied Materials, Canon, Intel, Micron, Raytheon, Resonac, and others) plus 18 academic institutions, configured as an open-access fabrication facility serving DOD, academia, and industry simultaneously. The center is a structural anchor for the broader Austin advanced-packaging cluster that other operators — including SpaceX Bastrop and any prospective TSMC Austin advanced packaging facility — will increasingly rely on for research substrate, workforce, and supply chain integration.

Two-Facility Structure

The center operates across two UT Austin facilities with complementary roles. The TIE Pilot Fab at the Montopolis Research Center Fabrication building (MR2) is the production-side facility, providing low-volume high-mix wafer-level 3DHI packaging fabrication. The MR2 building was the site of SEMATECH in the 1990s and 2000s — the federal-and-industry semiconductor consortium that anchored Austin's first wave of semiconductor leadership — before being leased by private operators and then retained by UT in 2023 specifically for TIE. The site has approximately 66,000 square feet of functioning Class 10 (ISO 4) cleanrooms plus a 28,000 square foot Central Utility Building. The reuse of the SEMATECH-era infrastructure substantially accelerates the buildout timeline relative to greenfield siting.

The TIE Secure R&D Fab at the Microelectronics and Engineering Research building (MER) is the equipment-and-materials research facility, focused on 3DHI process and materials development. The MER building houses the Nanomanufacturing Systems Center (NASCENT) — an NSF-funded engineering research center established in 2012 — with approximately 6,000 square feet of Class 100 and Class 1000 cleanrooms supporting wafer-scale and roll-to-roll nanofabrication. The Secure R&D Fab buildout adds approximately 18,000 square feet of new R&D cleanroom space plus over 20,000 square feet of supporting utility and facility infrastructure, with state of Texas funding underwriting the construction.

The two-facility structure separates production from R&D in a way that mirrors industrial-scale operations rather than academic-scale lab work. The Pilot Fab runs production-relevant 3DHI hardware for DOD and consortium customers; the Secure R&D Fab develops the equipment, materials, and process IP that flows into the Pilot Fab over time. This is the lab-to-fab bridge that the broader 3DHI ecosystem has lacked.

Phase 1 and Phase 2 Program Structure

The NGMM program is structured as two phases, each 2.5 years in length, running approximately through 2029. Phase 1 establishes the center's infrastructure and basic capabilities — facility commissioning, equipment installation, process qualification, initial workforce training, and the establishment of consortium-wide design and process standards. Phase 2 engineers 3DHI hardware prototypes for the Department of Defense and automates production processes, with separately funded DARPA design challenges running in parallel.

Three exemplar projects validate the center's process flows during Phase 2. A phased-array radar exemplar demonstrates 3DHI integration for active electronically scanned array applications. An infrared imager (focal plane array) exemplar demonstrates 3DHI for sensing applications combining detector arrays with read-out circuitry of different process nodes. A compact power converter exemplar demonstrates 3DHI for power semiconductor applications integrating GaN or SiC switching devices with silicon control logic. Each exemplar exercises different aspects of the 3DHI stack and produces process IP applicable across broader application spaces. The exemplars are deliverables to DARPA but they also serve as the production validation that subsequent commercial 3DHI customers depend on.

Cross-Anchor Position

The TIE NGMM Center connects to the broader Austin and Texas semiconductor stack through multiple operational and research relationships. SpaceX Bastrop's advanced packaging operations for radiation-tolerant orbital silicon benefit from TIE's process IP and workforce pipeline; the broader Tesla-SpaceX silicon supply chain that runs from design through fabrication through packaging through orbital deployment depends in part on the 3DHI capability that TIE is building. Samsung Taylor's leading-edge logic and Tesla Terafab's prospective in-house fabrication both produce silicon that may eventually be packaged using 3DHI techniques developed at TIE. Apple's silicon design operations in Austin, AMD's design and consumer-AI silicon work, and the broader Austin silicon design cluster all benefit from the regional advanced-packaging research substrate that TIE provides.

The center's defense-electronics consortium membership ties it directly into the Texas defense-industrial spine. Lockheed Fort Worth, Raytheon McKinney, Northrop Allen, and Bell Textron all participate in the broader 3DHI applications space that NGMM addresses. Federal coordination through DARPA and DOD ties TIE NGMM into the Golden Dome SBI program and the broader US national-security space-defense supply chain.

The reuse of the SEMATECH-era MR2 building is structurally significant. SEMATECH was the federal-and-industry consortium that anchored Austin's emergence as a semiconductor center in the 1980s and 1990s, before being relocated to Albany in 2007. TIE NGMM at MR2 represents the continuation of the federal-and-industry consortium model on the same physical infrastructure, with 3DHI as the technology focus rather than the silicon process scaling that SEMATECH addressed. The continuity of consortium model and physical site is a structural feature of how Austin maintains semiconductor leadership across technology generations.

Why UT Austin

The center's location at UT Austin reflects four structural fits. UT Austin's existing semiconductor research substrate including the NASCENT NSF center and the broader Cockrell School of Engineering provides the academic research foundation that consortium-scale 3DHI operations require. The MR2 SEMATECH-era infrastructure provides production-grade cleanroom capacity that no greenfield buildout could replicate at comparable timeline and cost. The Austin metro's semiconductor design and manufacturing concentration provides the consortium customer base, supplier ring, and workforce pipeline. State of Texas alignment through the Texas CHIPS Office and the broader state semiconductor policy framework provides the financial and regulatory environment that the federal-state co-funded structure requires.

Founder leadership matters operationally. TIE was founded in 2021 by S.V. Sreenivasan, Paras Ajay, Larry Dunn, and Shrawan Singhal in response to growing industry interest in 3DHI, with John Schreck (former Senior Vice President at Micron) appointed as CEO in 2022. The combination of academic research leadership and industry-experienced executive leadership has been structurally important for the consortium's ability to navigate DOD, DARPA, and commercial-customer relationships at the operational level required for a lab-to-fab bridge facility.

Constraints and Considerations

The Phase 2 hardware prototype delivery timeline is the most material constraint. NGMM's success depends on delivering operational 3DHI hardware on schedule for DOD applications, demonstrating the lab-to-fab bridge function in operational terms rather than research terms. Schedule slippage on the three exemplars or on broader Phase 2 deliverables would weaken the production-bridge thesis and reduce the center's gravitational pull on commercial 3DHI customers and adjacent advanced packaging operators.

Workforce build-up is the secondary constraint. 3DHI process operations require specialized workforce — semiconductor process engineers, packaging specialists, equipment operators, materials scientists — at scales that the existing Austin semiconductor workforce can supply only partially. The TIE-UT Austin-Austin Community College semiconductor training partnership and the broader Texas semiconductor workforce pipeline through Sherman ISD, Grayson College, and UT system schools collectively address the workforce gap, but the center's full operational ramp depends on workforce build-up keeping pace with equipment installation and process qualification.

Watching Items

Phase 1 infrastructure commissioning milestones through 2026-2027 are the near-term watching items — facility commissioning at both MR2 and MER, equipment installation completion, initial process qualification, first consortium-customer engagement at production scale. Phase 2 transition in late 2026 or early 2027 marks the production-prototype phase. Each of the three exemplar deliveries (phased-array radar, infrared imager, compact power converter) validates or rebases the program's production-bridge function. Adjacent watching items include any expansion of the consortium membership beyond the current 32 commercial and defense companies, any DOD or intelligence-community certification that would extend the center's classified-program scope, and the trajectory of prospective commercial advanced-packaging operators (TSMC Austin, others) whose siting decisions may be influenced by the TIE NGMM Center's research substrate.

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