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back to article Hot DRAM! Samsung splurges $15 BILLION on Korean chip fab

Samsung Electronics has decided to spend a massive $15bn building a memory fab in South Korea. Samsung is the world’s largest DRAM chip maker, followed by Micron and SK Hynix. It also leads the NAND chip market, being ahead of Toshiba, SanDisk, Micron and SK Hynix. Toshiba and SanDisk are partners in flash fabrication. The …

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  1. Mark 85

    Why?

    Why would it have to either memory or logic? Why not both? Or maybe they have something else up their sleeves. That's huge chunk of change for only one product type.

    2 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why?

      The process to build DRAM and logic are different enough that you need very different equipment, and some of that equipment is effectively "built into" the fab. You build a fab to make one or the other, never both.

      With NAND the process is similar enough to logic that you can switch between the two without an overly great expense, though with the new "v-NAND" stuff Samsung is doing that may no longer be true. I don't really know enough about that to know if it is just simple chip stacking or a 70-100 metal layer process that would be very unlike a traditional logic process.

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  2. All names Taken
    Paris Hilton

    Shucks - sorry

    (embarrassed shuffle)

    wrong dram

    (silently mouths "dram" with sipping motions then "D - R - A - M")

    got them mixed up - Scotland you see

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  3. badger31
    Thumb Up

    $15bn

    Now THAT'S walking around money!

    (We need a 'Mom' icon)

    1 0 Reply
  4. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    $15bn 150,000 jobs?

    I had never thought of chip fabs as particularly hands on affairs

    But doesn't 150,000 highly paid chip fabrication engineers look like costing you about $15Bn/year?

    So assuming all that 10nm waferscale printing optics and excimer lasers are free then $15Bn is only going to cover the first year's salary bill.

    Or will it turn out to have been totally fabricated by some regional development authority?

    0 0 Reply
  5. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Explains their huge drop in forecasted profits then

    all gone on this FAB.

    Thunderbirds are most certainly not go in the Samsung world at the moment.

    0 0 Reply
  6. Steve Todd

    How long before its up to speed and cranking out commercial volumes though?

    I can guarantee that it won't be the middle of 2017, it can take years to get a fab tuned properly.

    0 0 Reply

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