Samsung unveils foundry road map to lead automotive chip sector

Choi Si-young, president and head of Samsung Electronics' foundry business, delivers a keynote speech at Samsung Foundry Forum 2023 held in Silicon Valley, California, on June 27. (Samsung Electronics)

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chipmaker, unveiled on Thursday its new global foundry business road map, with a particular focus on automotive chips.

The plans were announced at Samsung Foundry Forum 2023, hosted by the tech giant in Munich, Germany.

“We seek to take the lead in the field of autonomous driving and electric vehicles through technological innovations that meet global customer demands in a timely manner,” said Choi Si-young, president and head of foundry business at Samsung Electronics at the forum.

To achieve this goal, Samsung outlined detailed plans to diversify its cutting-edge semiconductor technology portfolio, ranging from artificial intelligence semiconductors, and power semiconductor devices, to micro controller units as well as wider adoption of its 2-nanometer manufacturing technology.

While reaffirming its plan to mass-produce its 2nm process by 2026, Samsung also vowed to develop the industry's first 5nm embedded Magnetic Random Access Memory by 2027.

The 5nm chip displays strong scalability, and fast read and writing speed, operating reliably at high temperatures.

In 2019, Samsung became the first company in the industry to mass-produce eMRAM using a 28nm silicon-on-insulator process technology called 28FDS.

Additionally, Samsung seeks to enhance its Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS technology which realizes the strengths of three different silicon processes on a single chip.

Also on Thursday, global partners under the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE) also showcased the latest trends in foundry technology, sharing insights into the future development direction at their booth exhibitions.

Earlier, Samsung launched the Multi-Die Integration Alliance to create new, customized packaging technologies, with some 20 partners, involving SAFE partner companies and major players in memory, substrate packaging and testing.

Together, they plan to develop differentiated package solutions tailored for various applications such as high-performance computing and automotive chips.

By Song Jung-hyun(junghyun792@heraldcorp.com)