Samsung Electronics is consolidating its DRAM production facilities at its Hwaseong site while pursuing an expansion to increase the supply of commodity DRAM. The move is seen as a strategy to maximize production capacity of commodity DRAM (based on DDR4), whose prices soared more than 80% in the first half of this year alone, while meeting as much demand as possible from big tech clients such as Apple, which is considering adopting DRAM from Chinese suppliers amid the memory supply shortage.
According to industry sources on the 27th, the Memory Manufacturing Technology Center of Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) formed a task force (TF) this month and began building a commodity DRAM end-fab at Complex 1 (H1) of its Hwaseong campus. The aim is to relocate end-fab facilities scattered across Hwaseong Complex 2 (H2) and the Cheonan campus into H1, while expanding production lines in the remaining space.
The end-fab connects memory components such as transistors made at the main fab, marking the final stage of the front-end wafer manufacturing process. The Hwaseong campus had expanded its production facilities primarily around the main fab, leaving the end-fab dispersed in Cheonan. Because the main fab and end-fab were separated, the time required to produce DRAM was inevitably longer, hampering efforts to increase the supply of commodity DRAM.
Jun Young-hyun, head of Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions (DS) Division, recently reviewed ways to utilize Hwaseong H1, where idle cleanrooms had emerged after older memory lines were dismantled, and confirmed it as the new end-fab base. Utilizing existing cleanrooms instead of building a new fab reduces investment costs and construction time, enabling a faster expansion of DRAM supply.
Samsung's latest reorganization goes beyond a simple capacity expansion, distinguished by concentrating the front-end and back-end production systems for commodity DRAM in one location to sharply improve efficiency. There had been considerable production inefficiency in transferring components made at the Hwaseong main fab to the Cheonan end-fab to complete the work. In effect, Samsung is transplanting to Hwaseong the advanced production system of its Pyeongtaek campus, which placed the main fab and end-fab at a single site from the construction stage.
"By around year-end, Samsung Electronics' commodity DRAM production capacity is expected to increase by about 15% from the start of the year," an industry official said. "Bringing the main fab and end-fab together allows wafers to be transferred to the back-end line in bulk, which also improves logistics efficiency."
