Semiconductor giant Micron is opening a computer memory design and development center at Atlanta’s Tech Square that will employ 500 people.
The Boise, Idaho-based company, the last manufacturer of memory in the U.S., will add Atlanta to a global network with more than 17 manufacturing and research and development locations including U.S. offices in California, Colorado, Minnesota, Texas and Virginia.
The center aims to tap into the tech talent coming out of Georgia universities — and not only from Georgia Tech, which is adjacent to the new office space and with which Micron has already been working through its foundation.
The center will take 93,000 square feet for the new office, which is set to open in January. While the news release didn’t mention the prospective location, the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported it was eyeing space in the 712 West Peachtree tower in Midtown (paywall).
Micron also hopes to forge partnerships with universities including Emory University, Morehouse College, Spelman College and the University of Georgia, among others. The company is playing up its diversity commitments, releasing a new report tracking progress against benchmarks set last year and making note of a collaboration with Georgia Tech’s Center for Engineering Education and Diversity (CEED) focused on fostering tech careers for underrepresented students. This work includes a peer-to-peer mentoring program and more recently, a challenge where university teams, starting at Georgia Tech, were asked to design a robot using ultraviolet light to fight COVID-19.
The company said memory, which it estimates already accounts for 30 percent of all semiconductor chips, is becoming even more vital as technological advances like 5G, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles take hold. The 500 jobs will include positions across various STEM disciplines, providing opportunities for new graduates to be on the cutting edge of advances in dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, and NAND, a type of flash memory used in flash drives and SSD hard drives — two of Micron’s fields of leadership.
“We are delighted Micron has chosen Atlanta as the location for their new R&D hub,” said Ángel Cabrera, president of Georgia Tech, said in a news release. “We are confident that the strong ecosystem of students, researchers, and start-ups will add tremendous value to their talent and innovation goals. We look forward to expanding our collaboration with Micron and welcome them to the neighborhood.”
Learn more in the news release here.
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