Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest DRAM manufacturer, will invest $3.1 billion this year in new fabrication facilities, mainly for next-generation 256MB DRAMs. A company spokesperson said the budget had been increased by 50% to allow the Korean conglomerate to stay ahead of its competitors in mass production of the memory chips, which are expected to come to market early in 2001. The 64MB DRAM chip is still the industry standard although some major manufacturers are switching production to 128MB chips.
A Samsung spokesperson said the investment is not intended to expand production capacity for existing memory chips, although some of it will be used to upgrade production facilities for other products including telecommunications equipment. The budget for R&D remains unchanged at $1.34bn, but the company’s sales target has been upped to $19.3bn, $2bn more than last year.
