Chip test equipment suppliers are competing for SK Hynix orders worth up to 400 billion won tied to the P&T7 site, according to a report from TheElec. The figure anchors what has become a contest among instrumentation vendors for a place in the memory maker's next phase of capacity expansion.

The order value, up to 400 billion won (roughly $290 million at recent exchange rates), covers test equipment for the P&T7 facility. SK Hynix has been building out this site as part of its advanced memory production plans, and the equipment selection now under way will determine which test platforms sit on those lines for the coming capital-spending cycle.

Test equipment for DRAM and HBM production occupies a specific position in the semiconductor instrumentation chain. Back-end and wafer-level test systems must resolve timing and parametric measurements on devices whose densities and interface speeds continue to climb, and memory makers typically qualify a small set of vendors whose platforms have demonstrated the uptime and correlation metrics their fabs require. An order of this size effectively locks in a supplier's share of test capacity at the site for years, which is why multiple equipment makers are bidding.

TheElec's report does not name the individual bidders or specify delivery schedules and technical requirements. What it does establish is the scale — up to 400 billion won — and the customer, SK Hynix, at its P&T7 location. Purchases of this scale usually proceed through a qualification and evaluation sequence in which vendors demonstrate measurement correlation on customer hardware before volume release.

For test equipment makers, the competitive stakes are straightforward. SK Hynix remains the leading supplier of HBM memory used in AI accelerators, and its capital spending on test capacity tracks demand from that segment. A vendor that secures a share of the P&T7 order gains a reference position at one of the industry's most watched memory plants; a vendor that loses may face a multi-year gap before the next major qualification window.

The report frames the competition as ongoing, with the award decision still ahead. Readers tracking the test and measurement market will want to watch for the vendor list when SK Hynix finalizes the order — and for whether the winning platforms reflect a shift toward higher-throughput test configurations driven by HBM production volumes.