The bus departed from Indianapolis International Airport in the U.S. state of Indiana and traveled along Route 52.

Outside the window were endless fields and forests.

About an hour later, a rural town called West Lafayette appeared.

West Lafayette is also known as the Purdue University city.

This means the existence of the university sustains the town.

Much of the land is also said to be owned by Purdue University.

Crossing the university campus, a sprawling open plain came into view.

Tall tower cranes stood upright there, like markers indicating a construction site.

The Indiana Fab, SK Hynix's first semiconductor plant being built in the United States, came into sight.

Kim Hyun-jung, head of the SK Hynix construction team, said, "This place used to be a cornfield."

Corn and soybeans grown across the Indiana plains were cultivated until last year even on the 133.5-acre (approx. 538,800 square meters) square fab site.

About 300 construction workers led by Team Leader Kim plowed through this vast cornfield in April this year and began excavation work.

He introduced that the current construction progress rate stands at 7%.

It was a scene where second-floor framing construction was underway among six or seven elevator towers.

Team Leader Kim explained that this is not two stories, but a single story.

It features a multi-level structure characteristic of semiconductor plants.

A cleanroom for manufacturing semiconductors is located at the top, while gas piping and chemical waste treatment facilities used for semiconductor production are housed at the bottom.

It is a waffle structure with numerous holes perforated between the upper and lower sections.

To withstand the weight of semiconductor production equipment, columns were densely planted in the lower section.

Semiconductor production, an ultra-fine process, does not allow even the slightest vibration.

That is why so much reinforcing steel and concrete are used.

If all the reinforcing steel used in construction were laid end to end, it would stretch 2,635 miles (4,240 km), comparable to the distance crossing the American continent diagonally from east to west, from New York to Los Angeles.

He went on to explain that the poured concrete is of a scale sufficient to pave the 8.1-mile, four-lane round-trip road between the construction site and the Tippecanoe Mall along Route 52, where the bus traveled.

When full-scale construction begins to install semiconductor production equipment such as electrical wiring into the reinforced concrete structure, about 3,000 people—roughly 10 times the current workforce—will work there, Team Leader Kim projected.

The plant, targeted for completion in the second half of 2028, is scheduled to employ 1,000 people.

Considering the ripple effects, SK Hynix estimates that a total of 7,000 direct and indirect jobs will be created.

For this region, which has little industry to speak of other than corn farming, there seemed to be no reason not to welcome it.

Of course, concerns over environmental pollution cannot be ruled out.

SK Hynix's stance is that it will do its utmost to take measures to minimize fine dust, noise, and pollutant emissions.

The semiconductors to be produced at the Indiana Fab are next-generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM).

They are cutting-edge, high-performance semiconductors so scarce in supply that artificial intelligence-related companies, including Nvidia, are lining up and waiting.

When this plant goes into full operation, HBM on a scale that can be made from hundreds of thousands of DRAM wafers each year will be produced, Kwak Noh-jung, president and CEO of SK Hynix, stated at the ground-breaking ceremony on the 27th (local time).

One might wonder how many HBM chips will be made, but the answer received was that it cannot be pinned down because the size of the chips on each wafer varies.

While it is impossible to guarantee at this point how many generations HBM will have advanced to by the time full-scale production begins in 2029, it is certain to be at the 7th generation (HBM4E) or higher, which is currently in the development stage.

To develop, produce, and verify these chips, top talent is essential.

This is why SK Hynix is building a plant on Purdue University's land and signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU).

Purdue University is said to be top-tier in the engineering field.

The Birck Nanotechnology Center at Purdue University, located near the site, is a place that nurtures semiconductor talent.

It was reportedly established in the past through a donation by the Birck family.

Spanning 186,000 square feet (approx. 5,228 pyeong / 17,284 square meters), this facility houses research and experimentation laboratories equipped with actual semiconductor production equipment and cleanrooms, as well as virtual reality learning spaces.

The sight of students changing into cleanroom suits and conducting experiments in the cleanroom stood out.

Professor Chen Chih-hung affiliated with the center introduced that it is equipped with equipment capable of patterning fine structures down to resolutions of less than 10 nanometers, noting that classes are being conducted at precisely the microscopic scale required for ultra-advanced technologies by companies like TSMC, Intel, and SK Hynix.

(Photo: Yonhap News)