A bird’s-eye view of Doosan Tesna’s new chip-testing plant in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province (Courtesy of Doosan Group)
South Korea’s Doosan Tesna Inc. will build a semiconductor testing factory in the country with an investment of 220.6 billion won ($159.7 million) to meet the growing demand for the inspection of new system on chips (SoCs).
Doosan Tesna on Thursday unveiled a plan to construct the plant in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, where the world’s top memory chipmaker Samsung Electronics Co. is operating the country’s largest semiconductor complex.
The semiconductor-testing unit of South Korea’s plant and machinery powerhouse Doosan Group is set to break ground on the facility of 15,870 square meters (170,824 square feet) this year with a schedule to complete the construction in the first half of 2027. The company plans to expand the factory if necessary to meet demand in the future.
“We will increase growth opportunities by actively meeting customer demand through introducing new test equipment and expanding the factory,” said a Doosan Tesna official.
TO FOCUS ON SOC, CIS
The planned factory is set to concentrate on testing high-performance SoCs and CMOS image sensors (CISs).
A SoC is an integrated circuit that integrates several components such as the central processing unit (CPU), the graphics processing unit (GPU) and memory interfaces on a single substrate or microchip. A CIS is a semiconductor that takes images of objects by extracting light, captured by a lens, as electrical signals for each pixel.
Doosan Tesna aims to make the plant a smart factory with central control systems such as auto stackers and autonomous mobile robots, as well as solar power systems.
The company plans to apply vibration control technology, which is eight times stronger than those for ordinary offices and twice better than those for operating rooms. Few Outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) service providers have used such technology.
It will design the facility to maximize the efficiency of traffic of staff and vehicles, as well as equipment while minimizing the inflows of foreign bodies into the clean room.
By Hyeon-woo Oh
ohw@hankyung.com
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.
