Applied Materials recently celebrated the 20th anniversary and 5,000th shipment of the Producer platform, a manufacturing system that helps make virtually every chip in the world, the company reported.   To date, 1.9 billion square meters of silicon has been processed by the Producer platform – an area equivalent to 30 times the size of Manhattan, according to Applied Materials.   The Producer platform was launched in July 1998 to help enable chips to run faster by changing their wiring from...