Samsung on Wednesday announced plans to invest $230 billion over the next 20 years in South Korea’s new semiconductor production megacluster. I think that it will become a country and take over Taiwan’s seat.
A South Korean government statement published by Nikkei said, “Megaclusters will be an important foundation of the semiconductor ecosystem.” [The mega cluster will enable South Korea to] Amid intensifying global competition in cutting-edge industries, Japan will make rapid progress as a developed country. “
Samsung’s new campus, located near Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, will house five advanced fabs. Some fabs will be used to manufacture logic chips for Samsung Foundry customers, while others will be dedicated to manufacturing various types of memory. Samsung plans to invest about $230 billion in the new site in exchange for tax breaks, subsidies and other incentives from the government.
$230 billion is a huge pile of money, but it will be spent over 20 years (or $11.5 billion per year evenly distributed) on giant fabs using state-of-the-art manufacturing technology. These manufacturing facilities will employ very expensive extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography scanners. Current-generation ASML Twinscan NXE scanners with 0.33 numerical aperture (NA) optics cost around $200 million, while next-generation Twinscan EXE scanners with 0.55 NA optics (high NA) are expected to cost around $400 million will be Every fab needs a few state-of-the-art scanners and thousands of other expensive tools to manufacture chips with state-of-the-art process technology. more common.
In addition to logic and memory chip production facilities, the new mega-cluster will also house a total of 150 Samsung’s semiconductor ecosystem partners, including suppliers of raw materials, components and even fabless chip designers, Yonhap reports. increase. Ecosystem partners tend to locate facilities near large fab complexes to simplify logistics, but finding fabless chip developers on fab campuses is nothing new. This makes a lot of sense, as a close collaboration between chip designers and chip producers at every stage could guarantee higher performance and shorter production times.
“Megaclusters include the entire semiconductor value chain,” the ministry said in a release. “The government will work closely with companies to smoothly implement measures to become a global leader in the system semiconductor industry.”
Interestingly, the South Korean government plans to nurture 10 fabless companies with more than 1 trillion won ($761.4 million) in annual sales by supporting the production of prototypes, Yonhap reports. He quotes the words of those involved.
Samsung’s $230 billion investment is a key part of South Korea’s plan to attract about $422 billion of private investment over the next few decades in areas such as batteries, biotech, displays, electric vehicles, robotics and semiconductors.
“The economic war that began recently in semiconductors has spread to advanced industries such as batteries and the automobiles of the future,” South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol told Bloomberg in a television interview. “Countries are generous with large subsidies and tax incentives to build state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in their countries.”
In fact, China, Japan, the European Union, Taiwan, and the United States are all looking to advance emerging technologies and industries such as AI, self-driving cars, high-performance computing, robotics, and renewable energy sources. Computer chips are essential to all emerging technologies and industries, so Samsung’s new mega-cluster fab complex is essential for the company and country.
