Samsung Electronics will establish a development facility in Yokohama, which is a highly symbolic initiative that is expected to promote cooperation between the chip industries of Japan and South Korea.
The new facility will cost over 30 billion yen (222 million US dollars) and be built in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, where the Korean company‘s existing location, Samsung Japan Research Institute, is located. The development center will be an independent unit. The planned investment will leverage the joint expertise of Japan and South Korea. Samsung is the world‘s largest memory chip manufacturer, while Japan is a major producer of basic materials for chip production such as wafers and chip manufacturing equipment.
There are no specific details except that the company will establish a production line for the prototype
chip equipment.http://www.ic-bom.com/
The new factory will hire hundreds of employees with the goal of starting operations by 2025. Samsung is seeking to utilize semiconductor investment subsidies provided by the Japanese government. It is expected that the total subsidy amount will exceed 10 billion yen.
Samsung declined to comment.
Samsung is about to release its second generation 3nm process technology, which has a 22% improvement in performance compared to 4nm. According to ThePulse, Samsung will present its current chip technology status in a preliminary briefing at the International VLSI Technology Symposium held in Japan from June 11th to 16th, and release its second generation 3nm process technology SF3 (3GAP). According to official forecasts, Samsung‘s second-generation 3nm process technology called SF3 (3GAP) will use the second-generation MBCFET architecture to further optimize on top of the first-generation 3nmGAA (SF3E). The performance will be 22% faster than the current 4nm process (SF4), with a 34% increase in energy efficiency and a 21% reduction in chip size.http://www.ic-bom.com/
The move by South Korea‘s most valuable company may stimulate more cooperation between the chip industries of the two countries.
This investment was made under the leadership of South Korean President Yoon Seon lie and Japanese Prime Minister Mansuo Kishida, following the re-establishment of a reconciliation relationship between South Korea and Japan. The two leaders are scheduled to meet next week during the G7 summit in Hiroshima.
Samsung‘s largest competitor, TSMC, also made a major investment in Japan in 2021, which aims to diversify its production base because people are worried about the excessive concentration of chip production in Taiwan, China, China. TSMC also has research and development facilities in Tsukuba, northeast of Tokyo.
Japan was once a global leader in storage chip production and has been trying to rebuild its production base by attracting foreign investment. TSMC and Micron Technology are the main foreign investors in Japan and have received subsidies from the Japanese government.
The new factory will focus on the so-called semiconductor production backend. In chip production, circuits are first created on the wafer during the front-end process, and then packaged into the final product during the back-end process.http://www.ic-bom.com/
Traditionally, research and development has mainly focused on the front-end of the production process to achieve extreme miniaturization of circuits. But many people believe that further miniaturization is limited and the focus will shift to improving backend processes, such as stacking wafers into multiple layers to manufacture 3D chips.
Samsung clearly believes that it needs to work more closely with Japanese material and equipment manufacturers to achieve breakthroughs in the production process. Samsung recently merged two research and development institutions located in Yokohama and Osaka to create a comprehensive research and development center called DSRJ in Japan. The report states that the new center is located within the Samsung Yokohama Research Institute. Samsung has established a new comprehensive research center for the device experience department Device eXperience in Japan under the name of "Samsung Research Japan". Samsung hopes to enhance its comprehensive development capabilities by restructuring its research and development institutions related to device solutions.
Why does Samsung frequently take action in Japan? Samsung has been in a sluggish state since its explosive performance in 2022. Although the company has taken some measures to cope with the downturn in the semiconductor industry, including increasing investment in the chip business and restructuring its business structure, it still needs time to restore its past growth momentum. Samsung Electronics‘ quarterly financial report released on April 27th showed that its semiconductor division suffered a operating loss of 4.58 trillion won (approximately 23.6 billion yuan) in the first quarter, compared to a profit of 8.45 trillion won in the same period of 2022, the first quarterly loss since 2009.
In addition, the restrictions in the United States have also had a certain impact on Samsung‘s business. Especially in the semiconductor industry, Samsung is an important supplier, and the supply-demand relationship in this industry is easily affected by various factors. Under restrictions in the United States, Samsung may need to seek other markets and customers to compensate for losses, which may further impact its performance. Samsung also faces other competitive pressures. In the smartphone market, Samsung faces strong competitors such as Apple and Huawei, while in the semiconductor market, companies such as Intel and AMD are also intensifying their layout in an attempt to seize market share.
