SEOUL, April 24 (Reuters) - South Korean memory

chipmaker SK Hynix plans to invest 5.3 trillion won

($3.86 billion) to build a chip factory for a new dynamic random

access memory (DRAM) chip production base in South Korea, it

said on Wednesday.

The Nvidia ( NVDA ) supplier plans to start construction at

the chip factory, called M15X, at the end of April and aims to

have it ready for mass production by November 2025.

Including a planned gradual increase in equipment

investments, the total investment in the new production base is

expected to be more than 20 trillion won in the long term, a

company statement said.

SK Hynix cut annual investment by 50% last year owing to a

chip sector downturn and said in October that increases in 2024

would be kept to a minimum.

Despite the chipmaker's stance on limiting investment,

demand for its high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips used in graphic

processing units (GPUs) to train artificial intelligence (AI)

systems is so high that the company's existing capacity is fully

booked for this year and much of next year, it said.

SK Hynix said the new production base is aimed at increasing

DRAM capacity with a focus on HBMs.

The world's second-largest memory chip manufacturer forecast

annual HBM market growth of more than 60%, with demand for

general DRAM rising steadily, led by high-capacity chip products

for servers.

SK Hynix plans to announce January-March quarter earnings on

Thursday.

($1 = 1,371.84 won)