Terafab, the chip manufacturing joint venture between SpaceX and Tesla, aims to reach volume production by the third quarter of 2028, Elon Musk said at a SpaceX conference held on Tuesday.
Musk said, “ I put big error bars on this because we don’t know if we will actually achieve this or not,” referring to the timeline shared.
The shared timeline is a rough schedule for the project, which aims to produce 1 terawatt a year of computing power for AI and robotics, and Musk himself calls it a “very aggressive” schedule.
Cutting-edge logic factories can take three or more years to build in the United States. The plan has been described as complex for Texas, as it combines advanced manufacturing, packaging, and testing of both advanced logic and memory chips in one facility.
Terafab aims to have its first test chip, using static random access memory (SRAM) circuits, functional around May or June next year at its Austin research facility. SRAM circuits are commonly used by chip manufacturers to refine manufacturing process development.
One of the many challenges Terafab faces is acquiring enough complex, expensive semiconductor manufacturing equipment from ASML or American Suppliers such as Applied Materials and KLA.
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In April, Intel said that it would join the Terafab project to help accelerate Terafab’s goals. However, the companies have not revealed how the collaboration would function. Earlier, there were discussions about potential cooperation with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (2330 TW), the world’s largest advanced chip manufacturer, but Musk later said Terafab is committed to running the facility itself.
