Musk's Terafab places rush orders with Japanese chip equipment makers
Terafab, the chip project jointly pursued by Tesla and SpaceX, has begun ordering from Japanese semiconductor equipment makers, with some delivery deadlines only months away, Nikkei reported. The orders support Elon Musk's target of mass production in the second half of 2028. Longer term, Terafab has told equipment makers it intends to reach 1 million wafers per month after 2032, about 700,000 of them for memory.
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Key takeaways
Terafab officials visited Japan earlier this month and met suppliers as Terafab began placing orders with equipment makers, some due within months, Nikkei reports.
Musk is targeting a first test chip in Austin in May or June next year and mass production in the second half of 2028.
Terafab's long-term goal is 1 million wafers per month after 2032, with about 700,000 for memory and at least 300,000 for logic.
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Terafab, the chip manufacturing project jointly pursued by Tesla and SpaceX, has begun placing orders with Japanese semiconductor equipment makers, and some of those orders come with delivery deadlines only months away. Nikkei reported on November 9 that several Terafab procurement officials visited Japan earlier this month and met with local suppliers, according to Korea's Financial News and Seoul Economic Daily, which both cite the Nikkei report.
The suppliers receiving orders have not been named. The rush is tied to Elon Musk's target of starting mass production in the second half of 2028.
The biggest topic in the semiconductor industry right now isn't Kioxia or Rapidus. It's Elon Musk. — Unnamed supplier executive, as reported by Nikkei via Financial News
A compressed timeline
Building a cutting-edge chip plant typically takes more than three years from planning to mass production, Seoul Economic Daily notes. According to Financial News, Musk has said Terafab's Austin research facility should produce its first functioning test chip in May or June next year, with mass production in the second half of 2028, a timeline he called very aggressive. Large-scale production is planned for a facility in Grimes County, Texas, where the first-phase investment is $16.8 billion, according to the Texas state government.
One Japanese equipment maker told Nikkei that Terafab had set a delivery deadline just a few months away, Financial News reports. Musk also thanked ASML and other partners for bringing forward equipment delivery dates during SpaceX's earnings announcement, according to the same report.
Memory at Samsung scale
Over the longer term, Terafab has told equipment makers it intends to reach 1 million wafers per month after 2032, according to the Nikkei reporting. About 700,000 of those wafers would go to memory chips for data storage and at least 300,000 to logic chips for computing. Wccftech notes the memory figure is roughly equal to Samsung's entire DRAM capacity, which Seoul Economic Daily puts at an estimated 650,000 to 700,000 wafers a month. For comparison, Rapidus has capacity of 25,000 wafers a month at its Chitose, Hokkaido plant.
Terafab is meant to supply chips for Tesla's self-driving vehicles and Optimus robots and for SpaceX's planned space-based AI data centers, with design, manufacturing, packaging and testing at one site. Intel announced in April that it would collaborate on Terafab's chip design, manufacturing and packaging, Financial News reports.
With the level of demand for semiconductors for SpaceX still unclear, we'll have to see whether the plant can smoothly fill its production capacity even after it is completed. — Hisaya Suzuki, Omdia
For Japan's chip equipment makers, the project represents potentially large new orders on top of already busy production schedules, with the challenge of meeting Terafab's delivery dates.
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