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Korea unveils plan to build $471 bil. mega chip cluster in Gyeonggi Province
(m.koreatimes.co.kr)
this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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That's one hell of a chip cluster, that must be an outright insane amount of chips. I wonder what they plan to use it for?
Oh it's a fab cluster, that does make more sense. ๐
Jokes aside, 7.7 million wafers per month by 2030, sounds like quite a bold plan, I suppose they expect a huge increase for the market, because right now, I think that would flood the market, and Intel is building too. So I guess the future looks sweet for heavy electronics users. ๐
When deciding if something related to making chips makes sense, I think you also need to consider geopolitical risk. From what I understand, a pretty large chunk of the world's semiconductor manufacturing is in Taiwan, and there's a significant chance it will all be taken over by China at some point. Meanwhile relations between China and the West are steadily deteriorating, and semiconductors are constantly becoming more essential to the world economy.
As an analogy, imagine a scenario where most of the world's petroleum production was controlled by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. It's something a lot of world governments would have a vested interest in avoiding.
Yes Intel has used that to get more funding from governments around the world for building their new factories, and they are building in Europe, USA and Israel.
TSMC is building factories outside Taiwan too for geopolitical reasons, and probably to secure the business in case of a Chinese invasion. Rumor has it that their Taiwan sites are rigged with explosives to make them worthless in case of a Chinese invasion.
Now Samsung adds a whopping 16 factories to the mix, but I bet Samsung wouldn't do that to save the world, they do it to make money.
Promising 3M high paying jobs outside of Seoul; sounds like a good way to increase political popularity, whether it succeeds (thanks to the government) or fails (because of the companies not willing to cooperate, at least the government did their best).
Probably a much needed distraction after the Itaewon crush caused by the poor police response and after they bullied an internationally famous actor into suicide.