Brian Tristam Williams

Microsoft data centre expansion in Wisconsin has moved from infrastructure milestone to legal dispute, after residents near the company’s Fairwater AI campus filed a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging excessive noise, low-frequency hum, construction disturbance and light pollution. The complaint filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin names Microsoft as defendant and was brought by residents living within 1.5 miles, or about 2.4 km, of the Mount Pleasant site.

SEMI has warned senior US officials that direct memory intervention could make the current supply crunch worse, as AI infrastructure demand pulls wafer capacity towards high-bandwidth memory and away from more conventional DRAM markets. In a letter to US officials dated July 1, the industry association said the memory chip industry is already increasing output, but that AI demand is outpacing current production.

Micron Technology has broken ground on a ¥1.5 trillion, about US$9.3bn, expansion of its Hiroshima manufacturing site, adding a new cleanroom intended to increase advanced DRAM and high-bandwidth memory capacity for AI systems. The Micron Hiroshima fab expansion is being built in Higashihiroshima, western Japan, where Micron Memory Japan already runs the country’s only remaining DRAM production site.