Recently, Texas Instruments announced the acquisition of Micron Technologies Inc.'s fabs in Leahy, Utah, for $900 million. It was once home to Micron's joint production of 3D X-Point and some NAND operations with Intel, but it was long underused and lost money.
Since March 2021, Micron has announced its intention to sell the Lehi facility, confirmed plans to discontinue production of 3D XPoint technology, and is looking to provide a new memory solution for its data centers through CXL interconnects. CXL provides high-performance connectivity between computing, memory, and storage to meet the growing demands of customer workloads driven by the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics.
The Lehi facility has a highly skilled team with expertise in all aspects of advanced semiconductor manufacturing, and after this transaction, TI intends to deploy its technology at the facility. Rich Templeton, chairman, president and chief executive officer of TI, said the investment will strengthen TI's competitive edge in manufacturing and technology and will be part of its long-term capacity plan.
The Lehi fabs will be TI's fourth 300 mm fabs in which TI's fabs are manufactured to operate the interfacing of DMOS6, RFAB1 and soon to be completed with RFAB2. In addition to its value as a 300mm fabs, the acquisition is also a strategic move, as Lehi will start with 65 nm and 45 nm production for analog and embedded processing products for Ti and will be able to go beyond these nodes as needed.
"Micron's Lehi, Utah facility has a long history of technological innovation and leading semiconductor manufacturing," said Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron's president and CEO. "We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Texas Instruments because it is an industry leader and truly values the talented Lehi team and the site's ability to effectively deploy its technology. We are grateful to the Lehi team for their commitment to Micron and for the partnership and involvement of the local community."