Samsung targets mass production at its Gwangju memory chip cluster in 2030

A few months ago, Samsung announced that it would be investing as much as $260 billion in South Korea's Honam region to build a new semiconductor cluster in Gwangju.

The company is targeting first mass production run at the new facility by 2030, with Gwangju now racing to get everything in place to make that happen.

Gwangju is now in a race against time to build out the water and power infrastructure by next year. This will enable Samsung to break ground on the new memory chip plants in 2028. Samsung isn't the only player in the memory space that's setting up new facilities in this region. SK Hynix has promised a similarly massive investment in the region.

Combined, Gwangju will see at least four memory chip production plants, all of which will require significant power and water resources. To that end, construction on transmission lines for the first phase of supplying 3.1 gigawatts is expected to begin in June next year. The total capacity to reach is 6.3 gigawatts.

In addition to building new plants in Gwangju, Samsung is also pushing forward with plans to bring online two more memory chip fabs at its existing chip plants in Pyeongtaek by 2030. This will enable Samsung to effectively meet long-term demand for memory chips.