Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
Samsung chairman visits semiconductor sites to highlight chip division's recovery
Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, center, listens to an explanation during his visit to the company’s NRD-K semiconductor R&D center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, Monday. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics
By Nam Hyun-woo
Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong visited the company’s chip campuses in Gyeonggi Province, Monday, highlighting the recent chip-making performance recovery of its Device Solutions (DS) Division.
According to the company, Lee visited the construction site of NRD-K, a 109,000-square-meter R&D cluster that Samsung is building in Giheung District of Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, with an investment of 20 trillion won ($13.5 billion) through 2030.
NRD-K began installing its facilities in November last year, including high-resolution extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment for next-generation memory semiconductor development, deposition tools for new materials and wafer bonding infrastructure designed to enable structures that join two wafers together.
During the visit, Lee was briefed on the latest updates in next-generation technologies for memory, foundry and system semiconductors and inspected new R&D facilities installed at the cluster.
Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, center, enters a clean room of the company's NRD-K semiconductor R&D center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, Monday. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics
He also visited the division’s Hwaseong Campus in Gyeonggi Province, where he reviewed manufacturing automation systems powered by digital twin technology and robots, as well as the use of AI technologies across campus operations.
Upon visiting the sites, Lee had a meeting with Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman and DS Division head Jun Young-hyun, DS Division Chief Technology Officer Song Jai-hyuk and other executives and discussed the latest developments in the semiconductor industry.
During the tour, Lee called for the company to “restore fundamental technological competitiveness through bold innovation and investment,” according to Samsung Electronics.
He also held a separate meeting with employees in development, manufacturing and quality control, listening to feedback from frontline staff who contributed to the commercialization of cutting-edge semiconductor products, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM), D1c DRAM and V10 NAND flash memory.
Google's Ironwood Tensor Processing Unit / Captured from Google blog
Lee’s visit is seen as a move to encourage the employees and researchers of the division, which showed noticeable improvements in performance for the second half of this year.
In the first quarter of the year, Samsung Electronic lost its leadership in the global DRAM market to its rival SK hynix, as its HBM chips for artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators were outcompeted.
However, the company’s HBM market share rebounded quickly in the third and fourth quarters, as the production yield for 12-layer HBM3E chips stabilized. The DS Division posted record-high memory sales in the third quarter this year, driven by strong demand for its HBM3E.
Driven by Google’s strong demand for its Tensor Processing Unit, analysts are expecting the division’s operating profit will reach 15 trillion won in the fourth quarter, four times that of the same period last year.