South Korea wants nation's chip makers to move beyond memory
www.theregister.com
President warns of 'all-out national warfare' around silicon as he announces $19B development package

South Korea’s president has described the global semiconductor industry as “a field where all-out national warfare is underway” as he announced a $19 billion to diversify the nation’s silicon sector.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    2·
    6 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    In remarks presented on Thursday at a government economic review meeting, President Yoon Suk Yeol called for South Korea to “open a new future for the semiconductor industry.”

    To make that happen, South Korea has created a $19 billion program to fund construction of chipmaking mega-clusters – especially the electrical and transport infrastructure they need.

    The United States and European Union have thrown tens of billions of dollars and euros respectively at IC manufacturers, while South Korea’s chip champs – Samsung Electronics and SK hynix – are indeed monsters of memory as they collectively hold over 70 percent of the market for DRAM and NAND flash.

    But beyond Samsung’s modest Exynos SoC operation (which can’t even satisfy demand for its own Galaxy smartphones), South Korea is not home to a notable manufacturer of high-value processors.

    Samsung and SK hynix have also made enormous bets on factories to produce more memory – some on the peninsula and others stateside (where they could attract funds from Uncle Sam).

    Memory-centric analyst firm TrendForce recently worried out loud about AI-fuelled demand for HBM skewing manufacturing investments away from DRAM, and maybe causing a shortage of the latter in years to come.

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