'Samsung Electronics to establish high-tech semiconductor R&D base in Japan' - 코리아타임스

Samsung Electronics' manufacturing plant in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics

By Lee Kyung-min

Samsung Electronics will build a development facility in Yokohama, in what is a collaboration between the chip industries of Japan and Korea, according to a Nikkei report, Sunday. Samsung was unavailable for comment.

The new facility will be built in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, home to the Korean company's existing site, Samsung R&D Institute Japan. The development hub will be a separate unit.

Specific details are not available other than the company will build a production line for a prototype chip device, the Japanese media outlet said.

The news is a further boost to President Yoon Suk Yeol's administration's plan to provide greater tax incentives for local chipmakers, as outlined in the K-Chips Act. It includes increasing tax credits for semiconductor facility investments, shortening and simplifying the approval process for manufacturing plant construction and making exemptions for government-commissioned feasibility studies.

The government also plans to establish the world's largest high-tech semiconductor cluster in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, by 2042.

The 7.1 million-square-meter industrial complex will house memory chips, foundries, design, fabless manufacturing, local parts supply, materials and equipment firms.

The Tokyo-based financial newspaper said that the new facility will employ several hundred people and aim to start operating in 2025 adding that Samsung is looking to make use of subsidies offered by the Japanese government for semiconductor investment.

Samsung's top competitor, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), also made a major investment in Japan in 2021, to diversify its production base to dispel concerns about the excessive concentration of chip production in Taiwan. TSMC also maintains a research and development facility in Tsukuba, northeast of Tokyo.

The newspaper said that the new facility will focus on the so-called back end of semiconductor production whereby a wafer is packaged into a final product after electric circuits are first created on a wafer.

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