Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, the country's leading memory chip makers, spent a record amount on research and development last year. br Samsung said,.... it invested almost 17 billion U.S. dollars on R&D in 2018,.... up 11 percent from a year earlier.br SK hynix spent almost three-billion dollars on R&D activities during the same period,... marking the third straight year that it has pumped over two billion dollars into R&D. br Both memory chipmakers said.... their R&D focused on dynamic random-access memory chips... and inventing new products.