According to the company, it expects to start construction of the chip factory, which has been named M15X, at the end of April with the aim of having it ready for mass production by November next year.
The total investment in the new production base is expected to be more than 20 trillion won in the long term. According to SK Hynix that will also include a planned gradual increase in equipment investments.
The company, which is a major supplier to Nvidia, had said only a few months ago that it was planning to scale back annual investment by 50% owing to a downturn in the chip sector. As late as October last year it had said that increases in 2024 would be kept to a minimum.
However, with surging demand for its high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which are used in graphic processing units (GPUs) to train artificial intelligence (AI) systems, its existing capacity is already fully booked for this year and well into 2025.
The new production base will be aimed at increasing DRAM capacity with a focus on HBMs which. according to SK Hynix, is forecast to see an annual market growth of more than 60%, with demand for general DRAM also expected to rise steadily, led by high-capacity chip products for servers.
