New line should help to fill demand for Qualcomm's SnapDragon 4 and Apple's next generation iPhone/iPad CPU
Since 1996 Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) has poured $9B USD into its semiconductor fab in Austin, Texas, one of the nation's largest semiconductor production facilities. As part of its deep research and development spending commitment and dedication to stay on top of the mobile market, Samsung is upgrading its CPU line with another $4B USD in investment, taking its total investment in the U.S. facility to $13B USD.
Samsung Electronics is the world's largest supplier of memory chips, and one of the only suppliers to profit from its DRAM. It is also the biggest display manufacturer.
The South Korean company produces the chip brains inside every Apple, Inc. (AAPL) iPhone and iPad, part of what has led to wild international demand for its third-party chip-making expertise. Earlier this year Samsung committed to building a new $2B USD system-on-a-chip (SoC) line in South Korea and to retrofitting two memory chip lines for SoC production.
Samsung currently is building its chips on a second-generation 32 nm silicon process, though it's also reportedly warming up 28 nm lines for production.
Samsung's CPU supplying plant is located in Austin, Tex. near Texas Instruments and Apple.
[Image Source: Let's Go Digital]
Qualcomm, Inc. (QCOM), which traditionally has relied on Taiwanese fab giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Comp., Ltd. (TPE:2330) (TSMC) has turned to Samsung [source] for help producing its hot 28 nm SnapDragon 4 chip, after TSMC struggled at the 28 nm node. SnapDragon 4 is set to power a slew of high end Android and Windows Phone smartphones, as well as Windows RT tablets and laptops.
Source: Samsung [press release via Market Watch]
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