The company plans to invest $15 billion in a new advanced chip research facility

A Samsung executive said on Friday that the company will invest 20 trillion won over the next few years to build a new cutting-edge chip research complex in South Korea, which will be operational by 2028.

As part of the project, the South Korean tech giant will build a new facility at its Giheung campus to focus on innovative new technologies and wafer fabrication processes for memory and system semiconductors.

As Samsung vice chairman Jay Y Lee attended the groundbreaking ceremony on Friday, which marked his first official move since his presidential pardon last week

'At this event, Samsung's de facto leader, Lee, told executives and employees that they are taking on a new challenge at the very site where 40 years ago we broke ground to build our first semiconductor plant.

Samsung would not exist today without its bold R&D investments for its next-generation products and in products that came afterward. We must continue to invest preemptively and emphasize technology,' he said.

The facility will cover 109,000 square meters on Samsung's Giheung campus, located just south of Seoul. This is the third of the company's major semiconductor fabs in South Korea. 

As with the other campuses in Pyeongtaek and Hwaseong, it manufactures the company's latest chips. With the complex, Samsung hopes to 'overcome the limits of semiconductor scaling and solidify its competitive edge in semiconductor technology.'.

As noted by the company, its Giheung campus produced the world's first 64Mb DRAM in 1992, allowing it to become the world's largest memory chip manufacturer the following year, a position it still holds to this day.

As of June, Samsung began mass producing chips using its latest 3nm process node. Global chip shortages of the past few years have been a boon to Samsung's chip division, which has been able to increase service prices as customers piled up inventory.

The company's chip division generated two-thirds of its operating profit in the second quarter. A higher yield rate resulted in Samsung's highest revenue for the quarter in foundry production or contract chip production.