Samsung Electronics today signed off on plans to invest $615.4 million to build a with Hynix, Intel, Micron, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba to secure the supply of NAND flash memory through 2010. [updated]

The new facility is expected to open in the first half of 2006, and will be based in Hwaseong, south of Seoul. "We are building the new line to prepare for rising demand of memory chips," the company said in a filing to the Financial Supervisory Service. The company said part of the investment for the new chip facility will come from the company's capital spending budget of $9.92 billion, and Samsung has already spent 85 percent of its semiconductor capital spending budget of $5.8 billion as of the third quarter, according to the report.