South Korea to build world’s largest chip manufacturing centerfor which it will have the Samsung Electronics collaboration. The company is going to invest 230,000 million dollars in its development. This has been revealed, according to CNN, the South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. In addition, Samsung has also confirmed the news, and its investment in the project.
The company thus joins the government’s plan, which intends to spend some 422,000 million dollars in the development of components in various sectors, including chips, batteries, robots, biotechnology and electronic vehicles. To do this, they will not only focus on starting up factories, but they will also create design centers, and start up companies that supply materials to boost the country’s supply chain.
Samsung’s investment, crucial to the aforementioned government plan, will entail spending the announced amount over the next two decades – until 2042. It will be used to build various facilities on the outskirts of Seoul in Yongin province, which is part of the of the metropolitan area of the capital of the country.
The authorities hope to connect the chip manufacturing facilities that Samsung builds with other companies, with the aim of launching a “semiconductor mega cluster«. The idea they have, therefore, is to link various parts of the semiconductor supply chain, from chip design to manufacturing.
According to him South Korean Minister of Energy, Industry and Commerce Lee Chang-yang, to choose the point where the factories will be, have taken into account the synergy effect that could occur from the existing semiconductor clusters. In total, Samsung will build five chip factories as part of this plan. To protect the intellectual property of the chips, the authorities have confirmed that they are going to review their Industrial Technology Protection Law, although for now they have not given details about the changes they will make to it.
In a statement sent to Techcrunch, from Samsung they indicate that they expect the government’s investment in the plan to reach 230,000 million dollars, without offering many more details about the center that is planned to be built for South Korea to climb positions in terms of chip development.
In addition to launching the center, the South Korean government wants to boost high-tech sectors by working with various companies, and intends to offer extended tax breaks to high-tech companies. All apart from the plan announced by the South Korean Minister of Science and Information Technology to boost the sector dedicated to the manufacture of Artificial Intelligence chips, endowed with 642.5 million dollars.
