Samsung Electronics to hoist foundry IP portfolio to narrow gap with TSMC

Samsung Electronics Co.’s Pyeongtaek Campus [Courtesy of Samsung Electronics]

Samsung Electronics Co. will join hands with intellectual property (IP) partners essential in chip design to expand its advanced IP portfolio and establish a foundry ecosystem, with hopes to narrow the gap with foundry leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).

According to the company’s semiconductor business newsroom on Wednesday, Samsung Electronics plans to unveil its collaboration details with IP partners such as Synopsys, Cadence, and AlphaWave, and also its cutting-edge IP roadmap strategy at Samsung Foundry Forum that will be held in San Jose, California, on June 28.

Semiconductor products are a collection of numerous intellectual properties (IPs) and since fabless semiconductor design companies cannot develop all the necessary IPs for product design, IP companies typically develop specific IPs and provide them to fabless companies, integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), and foundry firms, earning licensing fees for IP usage.

Through these collaborations, Samsung Electronics will share foundry process information necessary for the development of cutting-edge IPs, such as process design kits (PDKs) and design methodologies (DMs), with its IP partners.

In return, the IP partners will develop IPs optimized for Samsung Electronics’ foundry process and offer them to domestic and international fabless customers.

Samsung Electronics plans to proactively secure core IPs needed by customers in various fields, including artificial intelligence (AI), graphics processing units (GPUs), high-performance computing (HPC), automotive, and mobile, thereby attracting new fabless customers and enhancing customer development support capabilities. The IP portfolio will include dozens of IPs that can be processed from 3-nanometer to 8-nanometer processes.

Samsung Electronics plans to collaborate with global IP partners to develop interface IPs that enable high-speed data input and output, such as PCIe 6.0, DDR5, LPDDR5X, and advanced package-related IPs like UCIe, which involves packaging multiple semiconductors into a single package.

The company will also strengthen its competitiveness in the automotive sector by securing automotive IPs that meet the highest level of quality standards for vehicle semiconductors, such as AEC Q100 and ASIL.

The leaders of Samsung Foundry Business and Semiconductor R&D Center are holding up three fingers as a symbol of 3nm celebrating the company’s first ever production of 3nm process with GAA architecture. [Photo provided by Samsung Electronics]

Based on these efforts, domestic and international fabless customers will be able to utilize IPs optimized for Samsung Electronics’ foundry process at the appropriate stages of their product development.

This is expected to significantly reduce errors from the early design stages and reduce the time and cost required for prototyping, verification, and commercial production.

Attention is now drawn to whether Samsung Electronics can lay the foundation to catch up with TSMC through these collaborations.

According to Taiwan-based market research firm TrendForce, Samsung Electronics’ foundry market share stood at 12.4 percent in the first quarter of this year, widening the gap with TSMC (60.1 percent) to 47.7 percentage points from 42.7 percentage points.

As of October last year, Samsung Electronics provided over 4,000 IPs with the support of 56 IP partners. Since the establishment of its foundry business unit in 2017, the company has continuously increased the number of IP partners and IPs, achieving a growth rate of three times.

These IP acquisition efforts have led to an expansion in the customer base. In the past year, the number of Samsung Foundry customers more than doubled compared to 2017.

Recently, Samsung Electronics announced a collaboration with U.S. AI chip design company Ambarella, expanding its customer base from mobile to AI, HPC, and automotive.

According to market research firm MarketsandMarkets, the global semiconductor IP market is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 16.8 percent to about $10.2 billion in 2025 from $3.9 billion in 2019.