Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have rejected a proposal to prepay KRW25 trillion (approx. US$18.7 billion) in electricity bills, highlighting the financing challenge facing South Korea as it accelerates semiconductor expansion and the power infrastructure needed to support it.
Sandisk is making an unusual push into engineering recruitment in South Korea, seeking talent across NAND system architecture, NAND core design, VLSI design, and mask design while listing experience in HBM, LPDDR, and GDDR among key qualifications.
SK Hynix has increased the cash portion of its profit-sharing bonus in a revised tentative wage agreement, after production workers rejected an earlier stock-heavy proposal by just 25 votes.
SK Hynix is targeting 2028 to apply High-NA extreme ultraviolet lithography to DRAM mass production and is considering joining an industry initiative to develop 12-inch photomasks, according to South Korea's fnnews. The company has separately confirmed both plans.
China's leading DRAM maker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has begun trial production of HBM3, but its initial yield has reportedly remained around 25%, highlighting the difficulty of translating its progress in conventional DRAM into high-performance AI memory.
