Samsung Electronics is consolidating its DRAM production facilities at its Hwaseong campus while expanding capacity to increase the supply of commodity DRAM.
Samsung's commodity DRAM production capacity is expected to be about 15% higher by year-end than at the start of the year.
Samsung Electronics is consolidating its DRAM production process at its Hwaseong campus, aiming to raise commodity DRAM capacity by about 15% from the start of the year by year-end. Chip analyst Jukan relayed the plan on July 27, citing Korean industry sources.
Chipmaking splits into two broad stages. The main fab etches transistors and circuits onto a wafer, and the end-fab connects those components into a finished chip. The end-fab is the last step of front-end processing, where the memory becomes something that can actually be used. Samsung's Memory Manufacturing Technology Center formed a task force this month to build a new commodity DRAM end-fab at H1, the first complex of its Hwaseong campus. End-fab equipment scattered across the second complex (H2) and the Cheonan campus is being relocated to H1, and new production lines are going into the space that frees up.
Samsung had historically expanded its main fabs at Hwaseong while leaving some end-fab work behind in Cheonan. The physical distance between the two stages stretched out how long it took to get finished DRAM out the door, which became a drag on ramping up commodity supply. This reshuffle reuses idle cleanroom space at H1 that opened up after older memory lines were dismantled. Repurposing an existing cleanroom instead of building a new one cuts both the capital spend and the construction timeline. Jun Young-hyun, who heads Samsung's Device Solutions division, reviewed how to use that space and settled on making it the new end-fab hub, essentially importing the model Samsung already runs at Pyeongtaek, where main fabs and end-fabs have been colocated since the campus was built.
An industry official said Samsung's commodity DRAM capacity should be about 15% higher by year-end than it was in January, with the consolidated layout also improving logistics since wafers can move to downstream lines in bulk. The move lands as DDR4 prices have jumped more than 80% in the first half of the year. With the memory shortage severe enough that major customers like Apple are weighing Chinese DRAM suppliers, Samsung's own capacity expansion reads as an attempt to meet that demand directly rather than cede it to cheaper outside supply.
Why it matters · Samsung boosting its own DRAM capacity, rather than relying on cheaper outside supply, shows how tight the memory market has gotten, and capacity that comes online by year-end could ease, or fail to ease, the shortage squeezing phone and PC makers.
Worth asking · Is Samsung's 15% capacity boost enough to ease the DRAM shortage, or does demand keep outrunning supply either way?