Samsung Electronics to build domestic fabless, AI chips ecosystem

Choi Si-young, president of foundry business at Samsung Electronics, announces at the annual Samsung Foundry Forum 2023 held at COEX in Seoul on July 4. [Photo provided by Samsung Electronics]

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. will join hands with the local fabless industry to establish a system chip ecosystem that involves artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor technologies.

Samsung Electronics on Tuesday unveiled strategies to boost the country’s AI chip ecosystem at the annual Samsung Foundry Forum 2023 held at COEX in Seoul. The tech giant plans to newly introduce PDK Prime, an essential information for chip development.

“Samsung Electronics will lead the AI era paradigm through preemptive and close collaboration with global intellectual property partners, advanced processing specialized for high-performance AI chips, and differentiated processing,” said Choi Si-young, president of foundry business at Samsung Electronics.

PDK refers to the manufacturing processing information a foundry player offers fabless peers. Fabless companies utilize PDK to design chips tailored to Samsung Electronics’ foundry production process and equipment. The latest PDK Prime includes multiple information that help reduce product design time and improve design accuracy compared to the previous version.

Samsung Electronics will provide PDK Prime to fabless customers in the 2-3 nanometer process from the second half of this year. The company plans to expand the provision of information through 8-inch and 12-inch legacy processes.

Samsung Electronics’ move to introduce a collaboration with fabless companies comes as it believes that a strong foundation in fabless companies is necessary for the growth of the foundry business.

The domestic presence of system chips, however, remains weak.

According to the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association, Korea accounts for a mere 3 percent of the global system chip market. Its fabless share stands at about 1 percent. Of the top 10 fabless companies, six are from the U.S. and four are from Taiwan, including the No. 1 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).

Taiwanese fabless companies, both small and large, and TSMC have been building the system chip ecosystem. TSMC, in fact, is known to have a wide range of customers from global companies like Apple Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc. to Taiwanese startups.

Choi Si-young, president of foundry business at Samsung Electronics, announces at the annual Samsung Foundry Forum 2023 held at COEX in Seoul on July 4. [Photo provided by Samsung Electronics]

The foundry customers of Samsung Electronics, on the other hand, are estimated to be dominated by its own system LSI business unit, Qualcomm Technologies Inc., and Nvidia Corp., accounting for over 90 percent. This indicates that there are few potential customers for Samsung Electronics’ foundry in the country.

The Korean company, having realized the situation, has been strengthening collaboration with local foundry companies. At the forum, several fabless companies attended and presented their collaboration cases with Samsung Electronics.

LX Semicon Co., the largest fabless company in Korea, plans to strengthen its collaboration with Samsung Electronics, including both 8-inch and 12-inch foundry partnerships.

Korean startup Rebellions Inc. has commercialized an AI semiconductor called Atom, utilizing Samsung Electronics’ 5-nm foundry process this year.

DEEPX Co., an AI semiconductor development company, also developed four high-performance, low-power AI semiconductors using Samsung Electronics’ 5-nm, 14-nm, and 28-nm foundry processes.

Samsung Electronics, in the meantime, also unveiled plans to foster the local system semiconductor research and development ecosystem.

The company plans to expand its cutting-edge 4-nm process multi-project wafer (MPW) services for utilization in AI, high-performance computing, and other areas next year.

MPW services help design semiconductor products for foundries without semiconductor fabs, allowing them to create prototype products. Samsung Electronics plans to support 4-nm MPW three times this year. The goal for next year is to increase the total number of MPW services by over 10 percent from this year.

Samsung Electronics also plans to boost research and development partnership with universities at home and abroad. The company will provide 15 MPW services without charge to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology by 2026.