Samsung Electronics is getting ready to seal its leadership role in the global memory market by the mass production of faster and more productive chips for smart and connected devices with always-on displays. This mass production is been carried out for the “fourth industrial revolution”. This month, Samsung invested approxiaetly $1 billion in its production facilities in Austin, Texas which are used for advanced system-on-chip products.
Samsung has invested over $16 billion in the growth and stability of its Austin facility since its inception in 1997. The regional economy of central Texas received about $3.6 billion in 2015 from Samsung Austin Semiconductor alone. No less than 10,755 jobs were created in the area by the company with annual salaries to the tune of $498 million.
Samsung probably foresees a surge in the demand for System-on-Chip products in the fourth industrial revolution era and this is most likely the reason why it is enhancing its LIS chip business as well as its powerful memory chip market. It has released the manual of its detailed foundry process technology that is aimed at improving the process technology to more advanced levels. This is necessary for the production of faster and more productive chips and processors. Smaller size nanometre comes with more sophisticated chips and larger storage. The South Korean manufacturing giant plans to grow beyond its current second-generation 10-nanometer Fin FET process technology. By the end of this year, it is expected to release its 8-nanometer process technology, a 7-nanometer by 2018 and a 4-nanometer by 2020.
In the Samsung Foundry Forum held in Santa Clara, US, in May this year, Yoon Jong-shik, executive vice president of the foundry business at Samsung Electronics said that
“The inclusion of the process technologies above will enable an explosion of new devices that will connect consumers in ways never seen before,”
The current best chip in the world, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 processor is produced on Samsung’s 10-nanometer Fin FET process technology. Earlier this month, Samsung announced that the mass production of 64-layer, 256-Gigabit V-NAND flash memory chips had begun. This chip, V-NAND, currently has the fastest data transfer speed amongst NAND flash memory, a 1GB per second data transfer speed coupled with a 30 percent productivity gain compared to its predecessor. In order to meet market demands, Samsung will set up a new NAND chip plant in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province.
The investment in the Austin facility, the production of 64-layer V-NAND flash chips as well as the mass production of the Exynos i T200 Chip for IoT obviously shows that Samsung is preparing towards the next industrial revolution.
