14 DAY TRIAL // As a leading manufacturer of NAND flash memories, and the second largest maker of dynamic random access memories (DRAM) in the world after Samsung, SK Hynix plans to spend massive 31 trillion won ($25.94 billion) to expand its manufacturing in South Korea.
Over the next 10 years, the South Korean giant will build two semiconductor facilities in South Korea, something that will probably influence the pricing of computer memory in the coming years, but not too much. However, this is clearly a sign that there is money pouring from US companies like AMD, NVIDIA and many others that want to see HBM2 tech manufactured in larger quantities than before.
Apparently, the two factories cost around $26 billion and will be one of the biggest semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the world. The new factories are scheduled to bolster the manufacturing capacities of SK Hynix in order to reach the memory chips demands worldwide, and giving it the ability to rival its main competitor, Samsung.
An HBM2 arms race between Samsung and SK Hynix is taking place
Not willing to give all the HBM2 manufacturing exclusivity to SK Hynix, Samsung started to build as well a massive factory near Pyeongtaek, South Korea, which will cost 15.6 trillion won ($14.4 billion) and is slotted to begin operations in 2017. Samsung also wants to spend another 10 trillion won ($9.2 billion) to increase the factory's manufacturing possibilities over time.
According to Reuters, it's unlikely the two companies will start a new price war, but it's clear that at the moment the HBM battle is on between the two Korean manufacturers. Last week Samsung just announced it will get involved as well in the HBM2 race indirectly declaring itself SK Hynix main rival on the new stacked technology fabrication. However, even though there haven't been any straight up wars between the two companies, their expanding efforts are a clear effort to increase their market share.