Seoul Sep 8, : Samsung Electronics has launched the operation of an modern, massive manufacturing line for chips in South Korea. The brand new line of production (P3) in Pyeongtaek, the largest facility for manufacturing chips ever constructed by Samsung has started production of the latest NAND flash as of July.
“The Pyeongtaek campus is fast growing into Samsung’s main manufacturing center for cutting-edge semiconductors that range from the world’s smallest 14 nanometer (nm) DRAM, and the latest V-NAND to sub-5nm solutions for logic,” Kyung Kye-hyun, the president and CEO of Samsung’s Device Solutions division told an exclusive press event held at the campus, about 70 km south of Seoul.
The P3 line comes with Dutch ASML, a maker of chips and equipment for chip makers.ASML’s ultra ultraviolet (EUV) machines for lithography essential to create advanced chips, according to Yonhap news agency.
Samsung is the world’s largest memory chip maker, announced it has begun the foundation work on a new manufacturing facility, P4 located at Pyeongtaek’s sprawling 2.9 million square meters campus.
With 60,000 employees on its payroll The Pyeongtaek campus is almost equal to the area of the 1.45 million square meters Giheung campus, as well as the 1.6 million square-meter Hwaseong campus in total according to Samsung.
In May, US President Joe Biden visited the Pyeongtaek campus in which he highlighted the significance of semiconductors and the close collaboration in the area between South Korea and the US.
Samsung is home to five semiconductor facilities in South Korea — Giheung, Hwaseong, Pyeongtaek, Onyang and Cheonan -and four manufacturing facilities in the United States and China -four of them – Austin, Suzhou, Tianjin and Xi’an.Samsung is currently building a $17 billion facility in Austin, Texas.
In the press conference, Kyung struck a gloomy note, stating that the chip industry is in an economic downturn and is facing a variety of problems as the global economy has slowed down and businesses have are reducing their spending.
“I do not see any performance in the second quarter and into the coming year .however, we’ll try to make this crisis an opportunity to make the most of it,” he said.
To accomplish that, investing regardless of the economic conditions is essential, he said.
“Less investment in an economic downturn could result in poor performance in the good times,” he said, adding “consistent investment is the best option.”
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