South Korean SK Hynix this week announced financial results for its fiscal year 2016 and also revealed general plans for 2017, related to the production of new types of memory and the expansion of production capacities.

In a conference call held on January 26, Kim Seok, executive of SK Hynix, said, "China's mobile phone makers are asking us to greatly expand the supply of MCP [multichip package]. However, we are having difficulty in fully satisfying such demand."

SK Hynix posted sales of 5.35 trillion won and operating profit of 1.53 trillion won in the fourth quarter of last year. The fourth-quarter operating profit accounted for about 47 percent in SK Hynix's full-year operating profit which stood at 3.27 trillion won. Compared to a quarter ago, sales rose 26 percent and operating profit 112 percent.

Kim Jun-ho, president of operations at SK Hynix, said, "The shipments of DRAMs rose 13 percent, driven by expensive mobile DRAMs rather than personal computer DRAMs, on the back of the increase in server and smartphone-related demands."

He added, "The average sales price of NAND flash memory chips also rose 14 percent thanks to the increase in overall demand."

SK Hynix expects this year's market condition to continue to remain bright. The company predicted that the shortage of supply would likely to continue this year since DRAM demand would likely to increase by 20 percent but there would be lack of capacity expansion.

SK Hynix currently makes DRAM, mobile DRAM and specialized memory using its 21 nm manufacturing process. This week the company confirmed that it intends to start volume production of DRAM using its "10 nm-class process technology" (18nm?) this year.

The company started to mass-produce its 36-layer 128 Gb 3D MLC NAND (3D-V2) chips in 2015. Last year, the company also started to make 48-layer 3D NAND (3D-V3) ICs that are to be used for various types of memory cards, flash drives, embedded storage and SSDs. With its third-gen 3D NAND, SK Hynix focuses on 256 Gb (32 GB) TLC ICs.

Later this year SK Hynix intends to start volume production of 72-layer 3D TLC NAND (3D-V4) memory. Initially, SK Hynix intends to produce 256 Gb 3D TLC ICs and these are going to be available already in Q2 2017. In Q4, the company plans to introduce 512 Gb 3D TLC ICs (64 GB), which will help it to significantly increase capacities of SSDs and other devices featuring NAND flash.

SK Hynix also plans to start using the upper floor of its M14 facility to produce NAND memory this year.

The company also plans to start cleanroom expansion of the C2 fab in Wuxi, China, which will cost the company around $790 million and will take nearly two years.