Samsung Electronics to produce 4nm AI chips for Groq at Taylor fab

Samsung Electronics Co.’s chip plant in Austin, U.S. [Courtesy of Samsung Electronics]

Samsung Electronics Co. is set to manufacture the next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips for Groq, a U.S. startup specializing in AI chip technology.

Groq is a semiconductor design company founded by former Google engineers in 2016.

The California-based fabless said Tuesday (U.S. time) it had entered a partnership with Samsung Electronics to produce its next-generation AI chips. Groq is known for offering AI solutions that enable ultra-fast computations.

Groq’s AI chips will be manufactured using the 4nm (nanometer) process at Samsung’s Taylor factory, which is currently under construction with an investment of around $17 billion. The new factory is scheduled for completion later this year.

The AI accelerator chips developed by Groq will be produced using Samsung Foundry’s SF4X process (4nm), which is Samsung’s advanced 4nm FinFET platform technology.

Jonathan Ross, CEO and founder of Groq, expressed his excitement about leveraging Samsung’s advanced foundry process to advance Groq’s technology.

The upcoming next-generation AI chips to be produced at Samsung Foundry are expected to exhibit significant advancements in aspects such as processing capacity, latency, and power consumption. Of particular interest is the plan to utilize these chips to create an AI system surpassing the performance of today’s leading supercomputers, employing anywhere from 85,000 to a maximum of 600,000 chips.

This recent development marks the first time that Samsung’s Taylor factory customer has been officially disclosed.

Industry experts are closely watching Samsung Electronics as it prepares to compete head-to-head with the dominant force in the foundry industry, TSMC, in future chip manufacturing.

Samsung, with its already impressive yield rates in the challenging 3nm process, is poised to gain an advantage over the competitor in the 2nm process, said Park Sang-wook, an analyst at Hi Investment & Securities.