As per the second-largest memory chipmaker, SK Hynix, there will be a huge surge in demand for semiconductors propelled by the doubling of data centers, which underpin all the online services, over the next four years.
In a keynote address at an industry forum, SK Hynix Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lee Seok-hee said that he expects exponential growth in data and bandwidth consumption spurred by new technologies such as self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, and 5G networking. The so-called hyper-scale data centers are expected to double in numbers by 2025 to 1,060 while providing infrastructure and distribution systems for almost everything, ranging from social media to connected factories and agriculture.
The pandemic situation has highlighted the importance of semiconductors like never before. It triggered the demand for stay-at-home technology before boosting car sales as the markets rebounded better than expected. Lee claims that his company will be immensely benefitted. His company stands at number two number currently in terms of supplying DRAM memory and is rapidly growing its NAND business with the recent USD 9 billion acquisition of Intel Corp.’s storage unit.
“The total amount of both structured and unstructured data is expected to increase exponentially,” said Lee, former Principal Engineer at Intel between stints at Icheon, South Korea-based Hynix. “If you look at the capacity requirement of DRAM and NAND Flash for each data center, the numbers are daunting.”
The main participants, such as Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp., and Google, have been regular when it comes to investment in the increasingly crucial data center race. All three tech giants are now custom designing their own chips to improve efficiency.
Financial details
Hynix has laid down a plan to spend ₩ 4.75 trillion (USD 4.2 billion) on extreme ultraviolet lithography scanners. EUV technology is the main key to helping the company unlock higher-level chip fabrication methods. The company also aims to improve DRAM reliability by the factor of 20. It is a primary consideration for applications like autonomous cars and increases the density layer of storage capacity chips to 600 layers from the current maximum number of 176.
