Global electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is targeting the microchip design talent around Folsom with a new research and development office of Samsung Semiconductor Inc.
Samsung’s new Folsom office is at 2365 Iron Point Road, just down the road from the campuses of Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) and Micron Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), which also have chip design and R&D offices in Folsom.
Folsom Mayor Mike Kozlowski announced the new Samsung office during the State of the City event on Thursday. The 50-employee office opened quietly at the end of last year.
The addition of Samsung’s Folsom operations adds to a hub of microchip and memory chip research and development offices in the region.
The Sacramento market has access to highly specialized hardware engineers and chip architects who develop microchip and memory chip technologies. Those people could be current employees of local R&D shops, or they could be the people who have been laid off from local operations.
Both Intel and Solidigm cut employees last year. Intel cut nearly 550 Folsom employees and Solidigm cut about 280 positions in Rancho Cordova. Most of those layoffs were attributed to a struggling global market for memory chips.
Intel has had operations in Folsom since the 1980s, including R&D, marketing, sales and other functions. The local Intel campus has about 5,000 employees and is the region's largest tech employer.
Solidigm has its U.S. headquarters in Rancho Cordova. Solidigm was created as a new company in 2021 when South Korean chip company SK hynix bought the flash memory business of Intel for $9 billion. SK hynix is a South Korean supplier of dynamic random-access memory chips and flash memory chips. It's the world's second-largest maker of memory chips.
Boise, Idaho-based Micron’s Folsom offices employ about 300. The local Micron research and development operation was also spun out of Intel, although indirectly. In 2010, Micron paid $1.2 billion for Numonyx, an international computer chip developer, created as a joint venture of Intel and STMicroelectronics of Geneva, Switzerland. Numonyx developed memory chips used in cellphones, cars and computers.
In the fall of last year, German manufacturer Bosch paid $42.4 million for the Roseville campus of TSI Semiconductors, where the German engineering company plans to invest $1.5 billion to install a microchip fabrication line for components for electric vehicles and chargers.
In addition to being a popular consumer electronics brand, including Galaxy smartphones and watches as well as digital screens and appliances, Samsung is a major producer of memory, storage and processing semiconductors for gaming, automotive and other industries.
The Korean company has been adding more U.S. corporate locations. In addition to its chip technology center in Austin, Texas, which has been there for three decades, Samsung Semiconductor opened a new U.S. main campus in San Jose.
In Folsom, Samsung has been seeking staff engineers for System-on-a-Chip, or SoC, computer memory chip design, with a pay range between $138,000 and $215,000 annually. The company is seeking engineers with eight years or more of experience, according to a job posting on TheLadders.com. On LinkedIn, Samsung a month ago had posted openings for interns in SoC design, whose pay range was $27 to $57 an hour.
