Risch: Vote against chips bill ‘painful.’ What leaders said as Micron broke ground
Angela Palermo
Mon, September 12, 2022
Boise Mayor Lauren McLean said the city did everything it could to encourage Micron Technology Inc. to expand at its headquarters.
The company broke ground Monday at the site of its new $15 billion memory manufacturing fab. Micron leaders appeared alongside government officials and business leaders who helped Micron bring the fab to its Southeast Boise campus, south of the Gowen Road exit from Interstate 84.
“We did all that we could to keep this investment here,” McLean said. “Our city and this company have really evolved together. We are so proud that Micron has chosen Boise.”
Micron Technology Inc. President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, third from left, breaks ground Monday for a $15 billion memory manufacturing plant on Micron’s Southeast Boise campus. From left are U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, Mehrotra, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Acting Director Dr. Alondra Nelson, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean, and Scott DeBoer, Micron’s executive vice president of technology and products.
The fab is expected to generate about 2,000 direct jobs at Micron and 15,000 indirect jobs in industries across Idaho. The company has also said the jobs will be high paying.
Micron President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, Sen. Jim Risch, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and Dr. Alondra Nelson, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, also made remarks at the ceremony.
The event commenced with a red, white and blue explosion in the distance. Then officials turned shovels of dirt in front of a U.S. flag suspended by heavy construction equipment.
Boise Mayor Lauren McLean explains the importance of Micron to the community, and the impact of an estimated 2,000 direct jobs (15,000 indirect jobs across Idaho) that will follow the construction of the fab.
Micron’s cofounding brothers attend
Gov. Brad Little acknowledged two of the founders of Micron in attendance, Ward and Joe Parkinson.
“This piece of real estate and this company here, started by two brothers from the potato capital of the world – how appropriate is that?” Little said. “They came here with about three or four Idaho innovators, and I’m sure when they had their groundbreaking, it was probably with some farmer’s old backhoe.”
Risch: Idaho delegation backs semiconductor subsidy
Sen. Jim Risch said the groundbreaking was possible only because of the work he and others did in Congress to subsidize U.S. construction of semiconductor manufacturing, in part for national security. Most semiconductor plants are overseas.
While the entire Idaho congressional delegation ultimately voted against the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act, that was only after a considerable amount of spending was added to support other ventures unrelated to the $52 billion in support of the semiconductor industry, Risch said.
At the event, Risch said he and his colleagues, including Sen. Mike Crapo and Reps. Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson, “painfully voted no,” knowing the legislation would likely still pass, and if it didn’t, they could pass a standalone bill with the $52 billion.
President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law Aug. 9. Granholm and Nelson flew from Washington D.C. to Boise to attend the groundbreaking ceremony on Biden’s behalf, according to a White House spokesperson.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm speaks to the need for more U.S.-based microchip manufacturing and high-tech development.
White House science official on education pipeline
Nelson told the Idaho Statesman during an exclusive interview Monday that Micron’s investments could transform education in the state.
“If we are going to succeed, and we are going to succeed, in fulfilling the bold mission behind the CHIPS and Science (Act), we literally cannot afford to leave anybody behind,” Nelson said. “This has important implications for the region.”
Earlier this month, the company announced a partnership with the College of Western Idaho to deliver curriculum, such as advanced mechatronics engineering technology, to rural and underrepresented students. Mechatronics is a field within mechanical engineering.
CWI says it will lead efforts to deliver semiconductor programs and prepare students for Micron’s internships and technician apprenticeship program.
The company’s fab in Boise is set to be operational in 2025. It hopes to fill the new jobs with local talent.
“It’s going to take a couple years, but we need to reach those workers, reach those students and get them in this apprenticeship program,” Nelson said. “Get folks ready for the fab to be up and running. It’s the smart way to do it.”
Dr. Alondra Nelson, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, speaks about the importance of the CHIPS and Science Act.
Micron breaks ground on $15 billion U.S. chip plant, says more to come soon
By Jane Lanhee Lee
(Reuters) - Micron Technology Inc, the biggest U.S. memory chip company, on Monday will break ground for a $15 billion factory in Boise, Idaho, and its chief executive told Reuters an announcement of another new U.S. plant will be coming soon.
“We are in final stages of another high volume manufacturing site that is going to be announced in the coming weeks,” CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said.
Both plants will produce DRAM chips that are widely used in data centers, personal computers and other devices. Once operational, U.S. plants will account for 40% of Micron’s DRAM production volume globally, up from 10% today, Mehrotra said. The Boise factory will be operational in 2025, he said.
Micron said this will be the first new memory chip factory built in the United States in 20 years, and will create 2,000 Micron jobs by the end of the decade.
Since U.S. President Joe Biden signed the Chips and Science Act, which provides $52 billion to support home grown semiconductor manufacturing, a slew of companies have announced plans to make chips in the United States.
Intel Corp on Friday broke ground on a $20 billion factory in Ohio to build cutting edge processor chips.
While Micron once made chips in Boise where it got its start, volume manufacturing has moved away and it has big production centers in places like Japan, Taiwan and Singapore.
The company's core research and development operation has remained in Boise. Having manufacturing and R&D together will help accelerate the time to market, the CEO said.
Mehrotra said the U.S. investments do not represent a move away from Asian countries.
“This is not about divesting from manufacturing in any other part of the world, or bringing back manufacturing. This is about increasing,” he said.
“To meet the growing demand for memory, we have to increase our production," he said, adding that the "Chips and Science bill enables it to be increased here in the U.S.”
Micron has previously said it will be investing $150 billion through the decade, $40 billion of that in the United States. Mehrotra said that includes funds for research and development, the cost of which is increasing with advanced technologies.
(Reporting By Jane Lanhee Lee; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
Micron makes plans for a big new Boise building. Is it the giant manufacturing plant?
Micron is making plans to expand in Boise and build a big new building.
No, it’s not the massive new manufacturing center, dubbed a mega-fab, that’s been discussed in recent months. It’s a seven-story office building.
The proposed building “is to be a world class, state-of-the-art building for the Micron Boise campus, both externally and internally,” Micron wrote in an application filed with the city.
Micron is Idaho’s largest for-profit employer, with about 7,000 workers in the Treasure Valley, mostly on its Southeast Boise headquarters campus where the new building is planned.
Micron numbers its buildings. This building would be B42, and it would be adjacent to Micron’s B26, B36 and B37 buildings on the southern side of the campus at 8000 S. Federal Way. The campus is south of the Gowen Road exit from Interstate 84.
The proposal “is in line with plans to preserve our options to accommodate Micron’s future growth,” Micron spokesperson Erica Rodriguez Pompen said in an emailed statement. “Micron Boise is the home of our global headquarters, and the epicenter of our innovation efforts. We will continue to invest in this site in line with our plans to meet long-term demand for memory and storage.”
The application for a design review hearing says the building “needs to blend in well with the existing campus buildings and landscape, while incorporating modern design trends and building elements.”
The building would include a west entry plaza with a visitors’ drop-off point, a pedestrian promenade on the east, and outdoor dining and lounge areas and an amphitheater, the application says.
It would be 124 feet, 6 inches tall and have 524,000 square feet, according to the application, whose filing was first reported by BoiseDev. That’s twice as big as the 265,000-square-foot main building at J.R. Simplot Co.’s downtown Boise headquarters and roughly the equivalent of three Walmart Supercenters.
A Micron spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Micron plans its ‘mega-fab’ in US
After Congress passed of the CHIPS and Science Act, Micron said it was looking to build a massive manufacturing plant in the U.S., but declined to say whether that would be near its headquarters.
The legislation authorized about $52 billion in incentives to computer chip manufacturers to build fabs domestically.
Fab is short for semiconductor fabrication, the manufacturing plants where DRAM, dynamic random-access memory, and NAND flash memory are produced. Micron is the only manufacturer of DRAM in the U.S.
The new plant Micron is planning to construct, called a mega-fab, would employ 3,000 to 5,000 people, including engineers, operators and permanent construction workers, the company has said. Non-Micron jobs created as part of the fab would bring the total to about 10,000 people, according to previous reporting by the Statesman.
Micron has not yet said where it plans to build such a plant, in Idaho or elsewhere. Earlier this month, an executive at the company told the Idaho Statesman that it was considering locations in several states across the country.
Micron used to manufacture chips for sale on its Boise campus but stopped in 2009 and increased production at other fabs, mainly abroad. It still has a fab in Boise that the company calls a “pilot line” for research and development.
Business and Local Government Editor David Staats contributed.
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