Stefan Mileschin

SK Hynix last week announced plans to build another semiconductor fab near its headquarters in Icheon, South Korea. The production facility is not going to be as big and expensive as other investments, but will contribution to the company’s revenue and bottom line.

The new fab will be located on a 53,000 m2 site near Icheon, Gyeonggi-do province, and will cost SK Hynix around ₩3.5 trillion ($3.13 billion) to build. The company will begin construction of the fab in late 2018 and expects to complete the fab in October, 2020. The maker of memory did not say whether the plant will be operational by that timeframe, or if only the building will be completed, but given typical amount of time it takes semiconductor companies to bring up a new fab online, it is likely that the facility will process actual wafers by late 2020.

By the 'standards' of South Korea-based makers of DRAM and NAND memory, the new fab is small and cheap. Just to put the $3.13 billion in context, Samsung’s total investments in its Pyeongtaek facility will total ₩30 trillion ($26.1 billion) by 2021 and the fab is located on a 759,000 m2 site. SK Hynix itself is operating its own M14 gigantic fab near Icheon. In fact, the addition of the new fab to SK Hynix’s family did not have any effect on its commitment to spend ₩46 trillion (~$41.16 billion) on fabs in the mid and long-term future announced back in 2016. At present SK Hynix is upgrading its M14 fab in South Korea, buidling a new DRAM/3D NAND fab near Cheongju (South Korea), and expanding its C2 fab in Wuxi, China.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13129...new-memory-fab