On Friday, Samsung announced that it intends to spend 20 trillion won (about 15 billion dollars) by 2028 to build a new advanced chip research facility in South Korea.
The new facility will be located at the company’s Giheung campus. According to the tech giant, it will be at the forefront of advanced research on innovative tech and wafer fabrication processes used in making memory and system semiconductors.
The groundbreaking ceremony for the facility happened on the same day as the announcement, with Samsung’s vice chairman, Jay Y. Lee, attending in his first official capacity since a presidential pardon got him off the hook after he’d been convicted on bribery charges.
What Samsung wants to achieve
At the ceremony, Lee told executives and employees that the company is taking on a new challenge in the same location where it broke ground four decades ago to produce its first semiconductor plant.
He added that if the company had not made courageous research and development moves for next-gen products, Samsung would not have a semiconductor business today.
He continued to say that the company needs to continue its tradition of investing ahead of time and emphasizing technology.
The need to be ahead of the curve
The facility is projected to take up about 109,000 square meters at the Giheung campus south of Seoul. It will become one of three of Samsung’s major semiconductor production fabs in South Korea. In tandem with other campuses in Pyeongtaek and Hwaseong, it makes the company’s latest chips.
Samsung announced that with the establishment of this complex, it could overcome limitations in semiconductor scaling and gain a solid footing as a serious competitor in the semiconductor sector.
It is worth noting, as Samsung reminded everyone at the ceremony, that the Giheung campus was where it developed the world’s first 64 MB DRAM back in 1992, which pushed it forward to become one of the world’s largest memory chip makers even today.
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