Samsung to reveal roadmap for 'humanoid' chips at Tech Day

Samsung Electronics will unveil its roadmap for producing "semicon humanoids," or non-memory chips with human-like senses such as smell and taste, at the company's upcoming Tech Day event.

Samsung System LSI Tech Day 2023 [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Samsung Electronics will unveil its roadmap for producing "Semicon Humanoids," or non-memory chips with human-like senses such as smell and taste, at the company's upcoming Tech Day event.

The Korean tech giant is holding Samsung System LSI Tech Day on Oct. 5 at Samsung Semiconductor Campus in San Jose, California.

Inaugurated in 2017, the annual event previously provided overviews of Samsung's memory and non-memory chip business. However, this year it will focus solely on the non-memory chip business.

At the event, Samsung is expected to spill more details about developing and manufacturing humanoid chips as well as other solutions for medical robots, graphic processing units and large-language models.

“Semicon Humanoids are just around the corner to innovate the world with cutting-edge technologies for hyper-intelligence, hyper-connectedness and hyper-data,” the company wrote on its website.

“At Samsung System LSI Tech Day 2023, Samsung will showcase a variety of solutions that maximize the power of AI, 5G and machine vision to ignite the future of technology.”

Park Yong-in, president of Samsung’s System LSI Business, will make a keynote speech on Semicon Humanoid technology.

Lee Hae-chang, executive vice president heading the Next Generation Sensor Development Team at Samsung, will also take to stage to talk about “Sensor Technology for Vehicle Safety” and Yim Joon-seo, executive vice president of Samsung’s Sensor Business Team, will give a talk titled “Beyond the Human Eye: The Evolution of Image Sensors.”

Martin Ashton, chief vice president at AMD, will participate as a guest speaker, making a speech about "Collaboration on Graphic Processing Technology." Samsung in April partnered with AMD, a Santa Clara-based chip designer, to use its Radeon graphic solutions on its Exynos SoCs (system on chip).

Park Yong-in, president of Samsung's System LSI Business, makes a presentation at Samsung Tech Day 2022 in Silicon Valley. [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Humanoid robots are one of Samsung's latest fields of interest. In 2021, the tech giant announced it will invest 240 trillion won ($184 billion) in future businesses including robots and AI by the end of 2023. In March, Samsung became a 15-percent owner of local humanoid robotics company Rainbow Robotics, following its purchase of a 10.22 percent stake in the company in January.

“In the face of the Fourth Industrial Revolution era, where objects have to think and judge like humans, non-memory chips that can play the role of the human brain, heart, nervous network and vision, will be more important than ever,” President Park said at last year’s Tech Day event.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]