Micron this week announced that it had begun construction of a new advanced wafer fabrication facility in Singapore, which will take over 10 years to completely build and will cost about $24 billion. The new fab will produce 3D NAND memory with initial wafer output sometimes in the second half of 2028.
The new Fab 10B is being built at Micron's existing 3D NAND manufacturing campus in North Coast Wafer Fab Park in Singapore and is designed to deliver up to 700,000 square feet of cleanroom space once it's fully built out. To put the number into context, Micron's Fab 10A and Fab 10X have a cleanroom space of around 500,000 square feet, so the new Fab 10B will more than double Micron's 3D NAND capacity in Singapore.
"This investment underscores Micron’s long-term commitment to Singapore as an important hub in our global manufacturing network, enhancing supply chain resiliency and fostering a vibrant ecosystem for innovation," said Manish Bhatia, executive vice president of global operations at Micron Technology.
The new facility will be Singapore's first double-story wafer fab, which will enable Micron to build it out in iterations and without increasing actual footprint of the fab, which greatly simplifies building out the facility, albeit at the cost of more complex architecture.
The new Fab 10B will be configured in a way to support multiple next-generation 3D NAND manufacturing technologies, including nodes with over 500 active layers, so expect it to be equipped with the latest fabrication tools. In addition to volume production of 3D NAND, the new facility will also be used for R&D purposes, which will greatly simplify process integration and product ramps up. As an added bonus, the new facility will enable Micron to deepen its collaboration with academic and industrial research partners in the region.
Micron says that the new fab will focus on production of high-capacity 3D NAND devices for AI and data center applications, as the company considers these applications its major growth engines going forward. Still, it is necessary to note that the fab will be capable of making all types of 3D NAND devices if Micron needs to in response to future market changes. The current AI boom may or may not last beyond the 10-year timeframe it'll take for Fab 10B to become fully operational, so that versatility is welcome in the face of the typically cyclical nature of silicon demand.
In addition to producing 3D NAND in Singapore, Micron is also constructing an HBM assembly plant in the country. That HBM packaging operation remains on track to contribute materially to Micron's HBM output in calendar 2027.
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From an employment standpoint, the new 3D NAND wafer fab is expected to create around 1,600 jobs, largely focused on fab engineering and manufacturing operations. Combined with the approximately 1,400 roles associated with the HBM packaging facility, Micron's current expansion plans in Singapore amount to about 3,000 new positions.
Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
