WASHINGTON-The Justice Department said Hynix Semiconductor Inc., a Korean manufacturer of dynamic random access memory, agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $185 million fine for participating in an international conspiracy to fix prices in the multi-billion-dollar DRAM market.
The Hynix fine is the third-largest criminal antitrust fine in U.S. history and the largest in five years, U.S. officials said.
DRAM is the most commonly used semiconductor memory product, providing high-speed storage and retrieval of electronic information for a wide variety of computer, telecommunications and consumer electronics products, including mobile phones. The Justice Department said DRAM sales in the United States last year totaled about $7.7 billion.
