As previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, Samsung has formally revealed a new sophisticated chip-making factory in Texas that is expected to cost roughly $17 billion and generate 1,800 jobs. The new plant will be built near Taylor, some 30 miles south of Austin, Texas, where Samsung already has a facility. According to the WSJ, the new location is around 1,200 acres in size, making it larger than Samsung’s Austin facility.
“With expanded manufacturing capacity, we will be able to better fulfill the demands of our customers and contribute to the stability of the global semiconductor supply chain,” says Kinam Kim, vice chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics Device Solutions Division.
Samsung intends to begin construction on the site next year and begin manufacturing chips in 2024. Samsung is scheduled to start producing CPUs at the new factory in the near future, both for its own use and for use in other firms’ products.
According to the WSJ, the city of Taylor also offered Samsung incentives to establish its facility there, including property tax discounts of over 90% for the first ten years.
Samsung is a memory chip manufacturing behemoth, but the Texas factory will most certainly be used to produce sophisticated chips for other firms based on their ideas. According to previous rumors, this new factory might make chips as sophisticated as 3nm. Samsung has previously manufactured semiconductors for Qualcomm and Nvidia.
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The expansion comes as the worldwide semiconductor scarcity continues to wreak havoc on everyone from video game console makers to automobile manufacturers. According to recent statements from Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, the situation is unlikely to improve until at least 2023.
According to Bloomberg, the Senate just authorized $52 billion in subsidies for new chipmaking operations, albeit the CHIPS Act has yet to clear the House of Representatives.
The chip industry is planning capacity expansions, but many of the new factories will not be operational for some time. The manufacturing of TSMC and Sony’s planned $7 billion chip facility in Japan will not begin until 2024, the same year as TSMC’s massive $12 billion Arizona plant. Over the next three years, TSMC aims to invest over $100 billion in new semiconductor plants, while Intel wants to invest a comparable amount in the US and Europe over the next decade.
