SK Hynix to invest €94 billion to build four memory chip factories

Korean memory manufacturer SK Hynix plans to build four new factories. The factories are to be built about forty kilometers from the Korean capital Seoul and improve the company’s market position.

The new factories will be located on a 4.5 million square meter site south of Seoul. Construction is to start in 2022. In addition, SK Hynix is ​​investing in two existing memory plants in South Korea. Spread over the next ten years, they will receive a capital injection of 43 billion euros.

According to Reuters, the new factories and the upgrade of the existing locations should give SK Hynix a better competitive position vis-à-vis China in particular. That country is the largest buyer of chips. According to Reuters, China imported 238 billion euros worth of chips in 2017. However, the country wants to be less dependent on foreign suppliers, partly due to the trade war with the US, and is therefore investing heavily in its own chip production.

Details about the chips that the SK Hynix factories will be making are not yet available. The chip industry is transitioning to 7nm and later 5nm, for which manufacturers want to use euv machines instead of machines based on immersion lithography. In addition, dram manufacturers are gearing up to make ddr5. SK Hynix gave details about its ddr5 chips at the International Solid State Circuits Conference. According to TechSpot, the company has produced a 16GB DDR5 module that operates at 6.4Gbit/s per pin and 1.1V. By 2022, ddr5 would make up 25 percent of the market, the company expects.