SK Hynix to establish a high-tech packaging fab with a total investment of 19 trillion won in Cheongju..."Enhance HBM capabilities"

*This content was translated by AI.

SK Hynix will invest a total of 19 trillion won in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province to establish a high-tech packaging plant to cope with the growing demand for global artificial intelligence (AI) memories.

SK Hynix announced on its newsroom on the 13th that it will build a high-tech packaging fab (Fab, semiconductor production plant) "P&T7" in Cheongju Technopolis Industrial Complex. Construction will begin in April this year and is expected to be completed by the end of 2027. The site is about 230,000 square meters (70,000 pyeong). P&T7 is a post-processing facility that completes semiconductor chips produced in all process fabs in the form of products and finally verifies the quality.

"We have been reviewing various candidate sites at home and abroad," SK Hynix said. "We have decided to make a new investment in high-tech packaging fab P&T7 in consideration of the stable demand for global AI (artificial intelligence) memory and optimization of production of Cheongju fab. It is a strategic decision that comprehensively considers supply chain efficiency and future competitiveness while agreeing with the purpose of balanced regional growth policy that the government has been pushing for." He added, "We decided to build P&T7 in Cheongju in consideration of the need to strengthen the competitiveness of the semiconductor industry and develop balanced regional development."

This investment is an extension of SK Hynix's strategy to expand its Cheongju production base. In the first half of last year, SK Hynix demolished existing buildings on the site of LG 2 plant in Cheongju, which it had purchased in the past, and established a P&T7 construction plan. In the second half of the year, we started designing fabs along with demolition work. Currently, SK Hynix's post-processing facilities are in Icheon and Cheongju, and P&T7 will be its seventh post-processing base.

As AI competition accelerates around the world, the demand for memory for AI servers is increasing rapidly. In particular, as the average annual growth rate of HBM (high bandwidth memory) is expected to reach 33% during the 2025-2030 period, the importance of securing supply capacity including post-process capacity is growing.

HBM has a large proportion of post-process and advanced packaging technology due to its structural characteristics of vertically stacking multiple DRAMs. Accordingly, advanced packaging fabs are considered essential infrastructure for AI memory production. In terms of physical distance from the entire process, logistics efficiency, and operational stability, access to the entire process fab is also an important factor.

SK Hynix's strategy is to foster Cheongju as a key base for new AI memory. Cheongju M15 was completed in 2018, and a new fab M15X construction plan worth a total of 20 trillion won was announced in 2024. The M15X opened its clean room in October last year earlier than previously planned, and is currently setting up equipment sequentially.

"The recent rapid change in the investment environment surrounding the semiconductor industry has led to discussions on the meaning and role of local investment," an official from SK Hynix said. "We want to contribute to strengthening the national industrial base in the mid- to long-term, beyond short-term efficiency through investment in Cheongju P&T7 and creating a structure in which the metropolitan area and provinces grow together."

"We are closely reviewing the institutional conditions that can ease the burden on corporate investment and increase the execution power of large-scale long-term investments in connection with Cheongju's advanced packaging fab investment," he said. "Improving the institutional environment will increase the efficiency of the investment structure and help manage complex risks of corporate investment more systematically."

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*This content was translated by AI.