Samsung to spend $1.9 billion on logic fab, says report

LONDON – Consumer equipment giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has said it will spend $1.9 billion building a wafer fab line for logic chips in support of smartphones and tablet computers, according to a Reuters report.

Samsung said the "line" would be run 20- and 14-nm processes on 300-mm diameter wafers and Samsung hoped it would be completed by the end of 2013, the report added. The fab is intended to meet growing demand for "smart mobile solutions," the report said.

The report did not indicate whether this would be an additional module within an established fab or stand-alone wafer fab or where the investment would be located. Samsung’s Line-14 at its fab in Giheung, South Korea, was changed over from memory to logic production at the end of 2011.

The market for chips in mobile handsets, including processors, RF circuits, power management and wireless connectivity, was worth more than $30 billion in 2011, according to market research firm ABI Research and is destined to go up above $40 billion per year over the next five years, the company predicts.

Samsung makes the A5 and A6 processors for use in Apple iPads and iPhones although foundry TSMC is also believed to be trying to bring up the A6 processor on a 28-nm manufacturing process.

In April Samsung announced it would spend $7 billion to construct a wafer fab for NAND flash memory production in Xian, China.


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