Samsung Electronics’ Cheonan campus, home to the TSP division of its Device Solutions semiconductor business. Courtesy of Cheonan City
Samsung Electronics (005930) will build semiconductor test fabs in Vietnam, targeting the first start-up in the second half of next year. The plan is seen as a strategy to stabilize its global supply chain by building final memory chip inspection lines abroad, work that has until now been concentrated in South Korea. Samsung is turning Vietnam, where smartphone production has already given it manufacturing and logistics infrastructure along with a trained workforce, into a new back-end chip hub.
According to industry sources on the 5th, Samsung Electronics has decided to build two memory test fabs at the Yen Binh Industrial Park in Thai Nguyen province, Vietnam, and will bring the first-floor production line of the first plant, known as V1, into operation in the fourth quarter of next year. In a plan submitted to the Thai Nguyen provincial government, the company said the second-floor line of the first plant, V2, will start up in the first quarter of 2028, with construction of a second plant also beginning that year. The filing specified about 2 trillion won for the first plant, with total investment including the second plant reaching 105.7944 trillion dong, or about 5.48 trillion won.
The Vietnam fabs will handle final inspection of finished DRAM and NAND flash products before shipment. Memory chips packaged at the Cheonan campus in South Korea will be brought to Vietnam, where their electrical performance will be verified to confirm they read and write data correctly, and where they will be checked for normal operation under high temperatures and high voltage to screen out defects. The move extends overseas the memory test process that has been carried out at the Cheonan and Onyang campuses.
Samsung Electronics aims to diversify the bases from which it ships and exports finished products, reducing the risk that its entire supply chain would be destabilized by logistics disruptions stemming from shifts in trade policy or geopolitical conflict. Thai Nguyen, where the chip fabs will be located, has hosted Samsung Electronics’ smartphone manufacturing unit, SEVT, for more than a decade and has stable air and overland logistics networks in place. Samsung Electro-Mechanics (009150) also decided last month to invest 2.51 trillion won in expanding a plant in the same area that makes chip components for artificial intelligence servers.
The company is also putting effort into training the workforce needed to run its first chip fab in Vietnam. Samsung Electronics has dispatched about 100 Vietnamese engineers to its Cheonan and Onyang campuses for hands-on training. Through Samsung’s new engineer development program, SEED, it is passing on expertise in memory test processes, equipment operation and quality control.