Samsung has made significant investments in its semiconductor plants and for good reason. The chip business has been a cash cow for the company over the past few years and has enabled it to reign supreme in the market. Samsung obviously wants to maintain its lead which is why it's working just as hard to ensure it remains on top of its game.
Local news reports out of South Korea suggest that Samsung is going to start operating its new semiconductor plant in the country's Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province from July this year. It's said to be the largest semiconductor manufacturing plant in the world.
The plant has been built on 2.89 million square meters of land and Samsung will use it to manufacture fourth-generation 3D NAND flash memory chips that stack 64 layers of cells vertically. The Seoul Economy Daily reports that Samsung has asked its partners to supply it with the required chip manufacturing equipment by the end of May.
The production volume at the new plant will be limited initially and it will take a couple of years before the full volume potential is utilized. Samsung started construction on this plant bank in 2015 and has spent $13.6 billion on it. The plant will have a capacity for both planar and vertical NAND chips of 450,000 wafers per month.
