Micron to invest heavily to expand its chip production

Business Korea reports Micron is planning to aggressively build up its chip manufacturing capacity in effort to catch up with market leaders Samsung and SK Hynix. The site writes Micron plans to spend close to $830 million on upgrading its Hiroshima plant, as well as boost its investment in production and reseach by 40 percent to $5.8 billion in the fiscal year ending August 2016:

According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun on Oct. 12, Micron is planning to mass produce advanced memory semiconductors for smartphones in Japan. In order to do so, the company will spend 100 billion yen (US$830 million or 1 trillion won) for a year at the Hiroshima plant of Elpida Memory, which was taken over in 2013, to install cutting-edge facilities, and secure mass-production technology.

Micron also plans to up its investment in production and research by 40 percent to US$5.8 billion (6.67 trillion won) in the fiscal year ending Aug. 2016, with a specific focus on DRAM and NAND flash memory chips. A considerable portion of DRAM investments will be injected to install a 16 nm chip processing system at the plant in Hiroshima. The 16 nm process is the most advanced semiconductor technology, which has 20 percent to 30 percent more productivity than the current 20 nm process technology, since it can produce more semiconductors with a single silicon wafer.