Terafab Aiming Memory Production of 700,000 Wafers a Month
Terafab, the chip venture of Tesla and SpaceX, has told equipment suppliers it wants capacity of 1 million wafers a month by 2032, including 700,000 for memory. That roughly matches Samsung's current total DRAM output, according to Nikkei reporting.
Terafab, the chip manufacturing joint venture between Tesla and SpaceX, is aiming for memory production of 700,000 wafers per month by 2032, according to reporting. The company recently told its semiconductor equipment suppliers about the target.
The plan covers 1 million wafers per month in total. Memory would take 700,000, and the remaining 300,000 would go to logic chips, the processors that do the computing.
How the scale compares
A wafer is the thin silicon disc on which chips are printed. The number of wafers a factory starts each month is a standard measure of its size.
Samsung's total DRAM capacity currently sits between 650,000 and 700,000 wafers per month. DRAM is the main type of memory used in computers and servers. Terafab's memory goal would therefore roughly equal Samsung's entire output.
Terafab is a newcomer. Reaching that level in about six years would be a major feat.
What Terafab is building
The venture has Intel's technical backing. It aims to eventually produce 1 terawatt, or 1,000 gigawatts, of AI computing power per year.
The project is at an early stage. An investment of $16.8 billion is earmarked for a semiconductor complex in Grimes County, Texas, which would eventually cover 100 million square feet.
Terafab plans to put mask making, lithography, advanced chiplet packaging and testing under one roof. That would cut the chip design loop from the current 6 to 9 months to weeks. The chips are meant to supply Optimus humanoid robots and space-based data centers.
TSMC talks
Terafab is reportedly renegotiating the terms of a possible partnership with Taiwan-based contract chipmaker TSMC. The sticking points include the operational control hierarchy and the size of investments.
The talks follow remarks by Elon Musk calling TSMC a mere "subcontractor." Musk had earlier ruled out TSMC holding a stake in Terafab or owning and running it.
Terafab also intends to use Intel's 14A process, a chipmaking technology, for its logic chips.
