SK Hynix is betting on two very different NAND factories for the AI era: a mature-technology line in China and an advanced one in South Korea.
The China leg is Dalian, where its Solidigm subsidiary has resumed work on a second fab building whose construction stalled in the 2022 memory downturn. The shell is already complete, Seoul Economic Daily reports, equipment installation could start as soon as November, and NAND mass production is penciled in for the first half of 2027.
That schedule followed a four-year pause. The South Korean maker took over Intel’s NAND business and Dalian Fab 1 in 2021, began Fab 2 in May 2022, then froze the project when prices collapsed.
The addition would enlarge the plant’s monthly output ceiling by about half once it reaches full rate, per the Seoul Economic Daily report.
The China plant is bound to older processes. Export controls that bar advanced tools such as EUV from Chinese fabs keep Dalian on roughly 100-layer NAND built with Intel’s floating-gate design, so it will turn out mainstream parts while Cheongju handles the frontier.
The advanced half of the plan sits at Cheongju, where SK Hynix is spending KRW 19.1T on the M17 fab. Its first cleanroom is due by the end of 2028 for 300-layer-plus NAND.
SK Hynix Group already ranks second in NAND revenue at $7.53B in the first quarter, a 17.6 percent share. Samsung, the leader with 31.6 percent, is converting its Xi’an fab to 236-layer NAND and laying groundwork for 286-layer parts.
