SEOUL, Jan 13 (Reuters) - South Korea's SK Hynix said on Tuesday it has decided to invest 19 trillion won ($12.90 billion) to build an advanced chip packaging plant in South Korea to meet rising memory chip demand related to artificial intelligence.
The chipmaker said in a statement that the construction of the new factory will begin in April, with completion targeted by the end of next year.
SK Hynix said accelerating global competition in AI is driving a sharp rise in demand for AI-focused memory, underscoring the need to respond proactively to growing demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips.
HBM - a type of dynamic random access memory or DRAM standard first produced in 2013 - involves stacking chips vertically to save space and reduce power consumption, helping to process the large volumes of data generated by complex AI applications.
SK Hynix, the main HBM supplier to Nvidia, was the leading player in the HBM market last year, with a 61% share, followed by Samsung Electronics at 19% and Micron at 20%, data from Macquarie Equity Research showed.
($1 = 1,472.8300 won)
(Reporting by Heekyong YangEditing by Ed Davies)
