Texas Instruments’ Sherman SM1 facility an exclusive 300mm fab is the first of four planned fabs on the site and
has now started shipping products to customers as it ramps 300mm wafer output.
Texas Instruments has already begun production of 300mm wafers at its new SM1 fab in Sherman, Texas, positioning the site as a major U.S. hub for analog and embedded power semiconductors, and here we try to dig deeper behind the company’s headline claim of “tens of millions of chips per day”.
New fab and mega-investment
Texas Instruments’ Sherman SM1 facility an exclusive 300mm fab is the first of four planned fabs on the site and has now started shipping products to customers as it ramps 300mm wafer output.
The Sherman complex is part of a broader U.S. manufacturing build-out valued at up to 60 billion dollars, with TI earmarking around 40 billion dollars specifically for the four Sherman fabs and construction of the SM2 fab already underway.
Focus on power and automotive chips
Unlike bleeding-edge logic fabs from Intel, Samsung, or TSMC, SM1 is dedicated to non-leading-edge power and embedded products rather than advanced CPUs or GPUs.
TI plans to supply chips for vehicle and consumer batteries, automotive lighting, and data center power systems, aligning the site squarely with long-lifecycle industrial, automotive, and infrastructure markets rather than short-cycle consumer processors.
Company statements and positioning
TI president and CEO Haviv Ilan framed the fab’s launch as an extension of the company’s long-held strategy of owning core manufacturing to secure supply of “foundational semiconductors” used across almost every type of electronic system.
He also highlighted TI’s scale as what he calls the largest U.S. analog and embedded processing manufacturer, arguing this gives the company a unique position to provide dependable 300mm capacity “at scale” for customers.
Mark Gary, senior vice president for analog power products, said the Sherman fab will be used to “push the limits” of TI’s power portfolio by boosting power density, cutting standby power to extend battery life, and reducing EMI to speed compliance and improve system safety.
He added that SM1 should have an “immediate market impact” as its first products reach customers in applications spanning vehicles, personal electronics, and critical infrastructure.
Question marks over scale and workforce
TI says SM1 is ready to ramp to output in the “tens of millions of chips daily,” a figure that underscores the efficiency gains from moving to 300mm wafers but also raises questions about how quickly that level of sustained demand and utilization can realistically be achieved in analog and power markets.
While 300mm wafers provide roughly four times the area of TI’s older 150mm lines and can significantly increase die-per-run, reaching such daily volumes depends on high yields, product mix, and long-term market conditions that remain cyclical and exposed to swings in automotive, industrial, and data center spending.
The timing of the ramp also contrasts with recent layoffs at TI’s legacy 150mm facilities, where 183 workers were affected as those plants were wound down.
