Earlier this month, industry sources said Samsung Electronics may be considering expanding its contract factory in Austin, Texas, to boost its position in the contract manufacturing market, foreign media reported.Now, foreign media are reporting that the company will expand its semiconductor plant in Texas to make room for the next generation of manufacturing equipment.
Samsung believes its plant in Austin, Texas, plays a crucial role in securing orders from U.S. technology companies.The company said the expansion was part of its preparations for the future, though it had not yet decided how much capacity it would add there or when.
In October, Samsung bought a new parcel of land near its contract plant in Austin.The company had asked the Austin City Council to approve the development.
Recently, city officials began reviewing Samsung's request to reclassify 440,000 square kilometers of newly acquired land for industrial use.
Samsung's Austin plant, established in 1996, is the company's only overseas wafer fab, making memory and system chips for mobile phones, tablets and other electronic devices, as well as providing contract manufacturing services for CHIP makers in the United States.
Currently, the plant is producing chips at 14nm, 28nm and 32nm for fabless customers, but the plant is not equipped with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment for products at 7nm or below.
Although Samsung has invested $17 billion in the plant, the equipment there is outdated.The plant mainly produces 14nm products, which were at the cutting edge about five years ago, but three generations behind the current industry-leading 5 nm process.Eventually, the company could invest nearly $10 billion in advanced equipment needed for new large-scale orders.
Some speculate that Samsung may increase its CONTRACT manufacturing in the US to keep rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing at bay.TSMC, an Apple supplier and contract chipmaker, is said to be well ahead of Samsung in the contract manufacturing market.Samsung is seeking to wrest the title of the world's largest contract chipmaker from TSMC.
In May, TSMC announced plans to build an advanced chip plant in Arizona that will produce semiconductor chips using a 5-nm process with a planned capacity of 20,000 wafers a month.
It is reported that TSMC plans to start construction of the plant in February next year, the official installation of trial production of 5nm in 2023, and mass production in 2024.The company has appointed Lin Tinghuang, director of c&C Plant 15A, and Wu Yihuang, senior director of technical Department, to be responsible for plant construction and operation.