News recently broke that South Korea’s Samsung Electronics plans to invest more than $10 billion to build a state-of-the-art logic chip manufacturing plant in the United States, hoping the investment will win more U.S. customers and help it catch up with industry leader TSMC (TSMC).
Bloomberg reported on Jan. 22, citing people familiar with the matter, Samsung Electronics (Samsung), the world’s largest memory chip and smartphone maker, is considering a more than $10 billion investment plan to build a plant in Austin, Texas, to produce the most advanced 3-nanometer chips.
Sources close to the matter said the plan, which is only preliminary and subject to change in the future, aims to start construction this year and install major equipment starting in 2022, with operations beginning as early as 2023.
The report said Samsung is using the joint efforts of the U.S. government to counter China and to draw back some of the advanced manufacturing that has been attracted to Asia in past decades. They hope these U.S. production sites will inspire local businesses and support U.S. industry and chip design.
The envisioned facility would be the company’s first in the U.S. to use extreme ultraviolet lithography, the standard for next-generation semiconductors, people familiar with the matter said. Asked about plans to set up a factory in the United States, Samsung said in an e-mail that no decision had been made.
Samsung has been looking at overseas chip manufacturing for years. Given the increased trade tensions between the U.S. and China, coupled with the outbreak of the Chinese Communist virus (Neocrown pneumonia), there is growing uncertainty in the global supply chain. Building a plant in the U.S. could help Samsung Electronics reach better deals with key U.S. customers, especially as it competes with TSMC.
In October 2020, Samsung America purchased a plot of land near its existing Austin facility, which is capable of running older processes. Minutes show that the Austin City Council (Austin City Council) held a meeting in December 2020 to discuss Samsung’s request to have that land rezoned for industrial development.
Samsung has ramped up its chip war, betting that it can catch up with TSMC by 2022.
Several of the world’s largest Cloud Computing companies, from Microsoft and Amazon to Google, are starting to design more of their own chips to more effectively power their massive data centers, the report said. These technology giants need manufacturers such as TSMC (TSMC) or Samsung (Samsung) to turn designs into products.
Recent Comments