The race for smaller fabrication processes has become more and more expensive, and the expenses in R&D and factory retooling only look to increase. This - alongside the expected increase in demand from silicon-embedded products, which are almost all of them - means that additional funding will be poured into chip manufacturing capabilities. A report from SEMI indicates that the 14% increased investment in 2018 to $62.8 billion will increase a further 7.5% next year, reaching capital expenditure of $67.5 billion in 2019.

3D NAND fabrication plants lead the charge in investment, even if the market is facing some issues stemming from oversupply. The demand growth is being taken into account for these new expansion plans, however, with denser and denser chips being required for all manner of products. This is part of the reason why 43% of this years' spending has been allotted to new NAND factories, but the ratio for 2019 is a much lower 19% increase.Of course, this is only part of a larger spending plan - in total, there are 78 fabs whose construction has started or is planned to start (and perhaps finish) in the interval between 2017 and 2020. Construction of these announced fabs will likely cost around $220 billion in land, fab equipment, and all the works, with South Korea being the king in capital expenditure ($63 billion) and China coming a close second, with $62 billion, followed by Taiwan ($40 billion), Japan ($22 billion) and the Americas at $15 billion. The semiconductor world is an expensive one, and there's no telling what new fab construction, expansion or retooling plans will be announced between now and the forecasted 2020 expenditures to see how high the expense can actually go.