Micron, the world’s third-largest memory semiconductor company, has made the biggest investment ever. Against this, Samsung, the No. 1 player, took a stand by announcing the technology supergap plan. As technology competition intensifies in the semiconductor industry, investors are also paying attention.
On the 4th (local time), Micron, the largest memory semiconductor maker in the United States, announced that it would “build the largest semiconductor factory in U.S. history” and “invest up to $100 billion over the next 20 years.” To do this, Micron decided to build a large factory in clay in upstate New York.
Micron, which has been producing semiconductors in Asia, is making a ‘U-turn’ of its production facilities to the United States as the ‘Semiconductor Industry Promotion Act’, which provides unparalleled incentives to companies building factories in their own countries, goes into effect. It is also interpreted that Micron has once more challenged the memory semiconductor market, such as DRAM and NAND flash, which has been led by Korean companies. The new factory Micron is promoting is 2.4 million square feet (regarding 230,000 square meters), the size of a semiconductor clean room alone, which is the size of 40 American football fields.
Micron CEO Sanjay Merotra said on the same day, “Without the Semiconductor Act, this decision would not have been made.” Through this investment, Micron will receive up to $3 billion in subsidies from the government and a 25% tax credit. New York State is also known to have offered a separate $5.5 billion (regarding 7.81 trillion won) support plan.
◆ Micron dreaming of escaping from third place
Micron is the 3rd largest DRAM manufacturer. When the New York plant is completed, Micron plans to gradually increase the amount of DRAM produced in the US to 40% of its global production. If realized, Micron’s production capacity will increase significantly, which might change its overall global market share. According to market research firm TrendForce, Micron’s share in the DRAM market was 24.5% as of the second quarter of this year. Samsung Electronics took the overwhelming first place with 43.5%, followed by SK Hynix with 27.4%. Micron increased its market share by 0.7 percentage points in the second quarter and narrowed the gap with SK Hynix. The industry believes that Micron is already at a level that threatens domestic companies not only in terms of production volume but also in technology.
In particular, Micron’s offensive is strong in NAND flash, one of the axes of memory semiconductors. Last July, we started mass production of the world’s first 232-layer NAND flash. Following the mass production of the world’s first 176-layer NAND flash in July last year, it is also on par with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix in the 200-layer or higher NAND flash, which is called the dream technology.
NAND flash refers to a memory semiconductor that stores data even when the power is turned off. The need for high-capacity memory has been solved by a ‘stacking method’ in which cells are stacked vertically. In 2013, Samsung Electronics introduced a 3D V-NAND product with a 24-layer stack structure.
Micron said that compared to the 176-layer NAND flash, the data processing speed of the new product was 50% faster and the area was reduced by 28%. Micron aims to actively target the market for high-performance products such as artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing with this new product as a weapon. SK Hynix succeeded in reversing once more by unveiling a 238-layer NAND, which is higher than Micron in August.
◆ Samsung reveals plans for super-gap with ‘1000-layer NAND’, a dream technology
On the 5th, at ‘Samsung Tech Day 2022′ held in Silicon Valley on the 5th, Lee Jung-bae, head of Samsung Electronics’ memory business division (CEO, left) and Park Yong-in, Samsung Electronics’ system LSI business manager (President) are making a presentation.Samsung Seonja also took an active response and played a defensive battle. On the 5th (local time), Samsung Electronics held ‘Samsung Tech Day 2022’ in San Jose, California, USA and unveiled a large number of next-generation semiconductor products and new technologies. On this day, Samsung presented a specific roadmap for memory semiconductors. First, in relation to NAND flash, the 8th generation V-NAND 512 Gigabit (Gb) TLC product, which has been stacked with more than 200 layers, was unveiled. This is a 42% improvement in the number of bits stored per area compared to the 7th generation product with 176 layers. The 8th-generation V-NAND that Samsung unveiled this time is estimated to be a 236-layer product.
Going one step further, Samsung Electronics announced that it will present a new paradigm with innovative technologies, such as mass-producing 9th-generation V-NAND products in 2024 and developing 1000-layer V-NAND products in 2030.
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