Lee Seok-hee, President of SK Hynix, "Data Centers to Double and Semiconductor Demand to Rise Within 5 Years"

Lee Seok-hee, President of SK Hynix

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] Lee Seok-hee, CEO of SK Hynix, stated that due to the development of technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and autonomous vehicles, the number of data centers is expected to double over the next five years, leading to a significant increase in the consumption of memory semiconductors such as DRAM and NAND flash required for this growth.

Lee made these remarks during a keynote speech titled "The Journey of Memory Semiconductor Technology Toward the Future ICT World" at the IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS2021) held on the 22nd.

Lee said, "In addition to structured data generated and stored by various electronic devices, the explosive growth of unstructured data is driving the global data centers' annual average growth rate to increase by 15% each year, and by 2025, the size is expected to be twice the current level." Unstructured data refers to real-time data used in unpredictable streaming or social networking services (SNS), as well as data created and disappearing in vehicle-to-vehicle and device-to-device communications. Lee predicted that due to the rapid increase of such unstructured data, the number of hyperscale data centers will rise from 550 this year to about 1,060 by 2025.

IRPS, organized by IEEE, is an international conference where engineers and scientists from various technology fields including semiconductors share research achievements. Lee received the "Outstanding Leader Award" in January from the Consumer Technology Society (CTSoc), a subsidiary organization of IEEE.