In January 1989, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded Texas Instruments (TI) a $112.6 million contract to develop the wafer fab of the future. The Pentagon’s goal was to ensure that American semiconductor manufacturers could produce the micro-electronics vital to U.S. defense by developing and commercializing new technologies and dramatically reducing the time and cost involved in producing silicon wafers. TI’s goal was to pare the cost of building a wafer fab from several hundred million dollars to $30 million, decrease the wafer production cycle time from 30 days to three days, and make the production of small batches of wafers economical. TI was also responsible for making these advancements commercially available to other U.S. manufacturers.
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