Samsung to release 'Mach-1' AI chip as soon as early next year

The electronics behemoth announced the name of its AI inference chip for the first time at a shareholders' meeting, where CEO Kim Kye-hyun sought to quell investor concerns.

Samsung Electronics CEO Kyung Kye-hyun, far right, speaks to the shareholders at the company's shareholders' meeting held at its heaquarters in Suwon, Gyeonggi, on Wednesday. [SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS]

Samsung Electronics will release its own AI inference chip, the Mach-1, as early as the first half of next year, according to CEO Kyung Kye-hyun on Wednesday, with the chipmaker in a desperate hunt for a breakthrough that will help it claim the lead in the cutthroat industry.

It was first time a specific name for Samsung's own AI chip has been disclosed.

The company also hinted at an imminent mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deal amid speculation about a partial acquisition of German automotive components company Continental.

"[The Mach-1's] technology verification has been done through FPGA [field programmable gate array] and it is undergoing the system-on-chip design process," Kyung said.

"The chip will be developed by the end of this year and early next year it will be out as an AI system comprising our chips."

Kyung's announcement came during a shareholders' meeting held at its headquarters in Suwon, Gyeonggi, on Wednesday, where some 600 shareholders gathered to voice their concerns about the company's future.

"The Mach-1 has been designed to support Transformer [a type of neural network architecture] models. We are designing the chip to reduce the amount of memory processing by one-eighth so that [the Mach-1] can do inference for a large language model by using LP [low-power] memory chips instead of HBM [high bandwidth memory]," Kyung said.

The development of this chip will be helmed by the newly established labs dedicated to artificial general intelligence (AGI) located in both Korea and the United States through which the CEO pledged the day before to "create an entirely new type of semiconductor."

"Existing AI systems have performance degradation and power issues due to memory bottlenecks," he explained to the shareholders Wednesday. "In order to solve this, we have just recently established the AGI Computing Lab and are pursuing fundamental innovation in AI architecture."

While admitting to the company's failure to take an early lead in HBM chips, Samsung Electronics pledged to reclaim the No. 1 spot in the global chip industry in the next two to three years.

Samsung's chip revenue faltered to the second spot last year with $39.9 billion, losing out to Intel, which raked in $48.7 billion, according to Gartner data.

"[With regards to being a step behind in the HBM business], we are becoming more well-prepared to prevent such a thing from happening ever again," Kyung said.

Samsung Electronics is banking on its 128GB dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) module as well as its recently developed 12-layered HBM3E chips and their follow-ups to lead its growth in the chip business this year.

In contract manufacturing, Samsung said it will initiate the mass production of two-nanometer chips from 2025 utilizing GAA (Gate-All-Around) technology, which it has a leading edge in.

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Han Jong-hee said that there has been "progress made" in the M&A sector, and he will be able to reveal more details to shareholders "soon," continuing to give positive signals to investors about a possible deal.

The electronics giant is reportedly mulling over a partial acquisition of Continental. Its most recent major deal saw the company acquire Harman in 2017, followed by a slew of small investments, mostly in startups.

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