Samsung's Line-16 is World's Largest Memory Facility, Now Operational

Samsung's new Line-16 memory semiconductor fabrication facility is now fully operational, the chip maker announced at its Nano City Complex in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, where the fab is located. According to Samsung, Line-16 is the industry's largest memory fab in the world. Samsung wasted no time in putting its plant to use and has already started mass producing the industry's first 20nm-class DDR3 memory modules.

"The global semiconductor industry is in a period of fierce cyclical volatility, so the opening of this new memory fab and the start of mass production of the world's first 20nm-class DRAM are important milestones to reinforce Samsung's industry leadership," said Kun-hee Lee, Chairman of Samsung Electronics. "We must prepare for an intensifying storm in the semiconductor industry by further enhancing our technological capabilities and expertise in order to maintain our leadership position."


Construction of the facility began back in May 2010. Trial production started in June of this year, and the facility was made operational for mass production a month ago, Samsung says. Line-16 is housed in a massive 12-story building that spans 198,000 square meters. According to Samsung, it's the industry's most advanced and largest memory fab ever built.

Samsung expects to crank out 10,000 12-inch 20nm-class NAND flash memory chip wafers every month. Starting next year, the memory chip maker will look to produce 10nm-class memory chip wafers.