Samsung Holds Foundry and SAFE Forum in Korea... "Leading the AI Paradigm"

Morning SAFE Forum, Afternoon Foundry Forum Held
Foundry Forums to be Held in Europe and Asia in the Second Half of the Year

Samsung Electronics held the 'Samsung Foundry Forum 2023,' which was previously held last week in Silicon Valley, USA, in South Korea as well. At the concurrently held 'Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE) Forum 2023,' the company announced plans to strengthen support for fabless (semiconductor design) customers by expanding cooperation with its foundry partners. The plan is to lead the paradigm of the artificial intelligence (AI) era through comprehensive service and production capacity (capacity) expansion.

Expansion of Design Support Kits for Fabless Customers

On the 4th, Samsung Electronics held the Samsung Foundry Forum 2023 and SAFE Forum 2023 at COEX in Samseong-dong, Seoul. In the morning, the SAFE Forum was held under the theme "Accelerating the Speed of Innovation," and in the afternoon, the Foundry Forum was held under the theme "Innovation Beyond Boundaries."

At the SAFE Forum, Samsung Electronics presented a shared goal of "customer success" with about 100 partners in fields such as electronic design automation (EDA) and semiconductor intellectual property (IP), introducing various ways to support fabless customers' product design infrastructure. Starting with advanced 2-nanometer (nm; 1 nm = one billionth of a meter) and 3 nm processes in the second half of the year, the company announced plans to support the Prime solution, a semiconductor process design support kit (PDK), extending to legacy 8-inch and 12-inch processes in the future.

The PDK Prime includes three items that can reduce product design time, two items that improve design accuracy, and two items that enhance PDK usability. In particular, the "Static Device Voltage Checker (SDVC)" item helps verify whether the semiconductor device voltage is designed according to specifications within 10 minutes. This can reduce the time required for rated voltage error inspection.

Choi Si-young, President of Samsung Electronics, is giving a presentation at the 'Samsung Foundry Forum 2023' held last week in Silicon Valley, USA. /
Photo by Samsung Electronics

LX Semicon: "Expanding 12-inch Cooperation with Samsung Electronics Foundry"

At the Foundry Forum, major domestic fabless companies such as LX Semicon, Rebellion, and DeepX participated as session presenters. They introduced achievements in developing AI and low-power semiconductors through Samsung Electronics' foundry processes. Ko Daehyeop, head of research at LX Semicon, said, "We intend to strengthen cooperation with Samsung Electronics Foundry on 8-inch processes," adding, "We plan to expand cooperation to 12-inch processes in the future."

The CEO of Rebellion emphasized, "The AI semiconductor 'ATOM' produced using Samsung Electronics Foundry's 5 nm process shows up to 3.4 times higher energy efficiency compared to industry-leading graphics processing units (GPUs) and equivalent neural processing units (NPUs)." Kim Nokwon, CEO of DeepX, explained, "We developed four types of high-performance low-power AI semiconductors (DX-L1, DX-L2, DX-M1, DX-H1) through Samsung Electronics Foundry's 5 nm, 14 nm, and 28 nm processes."

Expansion of MPW Service... Support Extended to Overseas Universities

Samsung Electronics also disclosed the current status and plans for its multi-project wafer (MPW) service and measures to strengthen the domestic and international system semiconductor research and development (R&D) ecosystem. MPW is a foundry model for small-volume, multi-variety production, producing multiple types of semiconductor products on a single wafer. Its purpose is to provide fabless companies with opportunities to produce prototypes.

Samsung Electronics started the 4 nm process MPW service, which can be used for designs such as AI and high-performance computing, in April. Additional services are scheduled for August and December this year. In 2024, the company plans to increase MPW services by more than 10% compared to this year, providing more product manufacturing opportunities to domestic and overseas fabless customers.

The company is increasing R&D cooperation with domestic and overseas universities to strengthen system semiconductor design capabilities. Since 2021, Samsung Electronics has been providing the 28 nm logic process MPW service free of charge to the Semiconductor Design Education Center (IDEC) at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). From the second half of this year, the scope of cooperation will be expanded to provide a total of 15 free 28 nm MPW services and support the production of 600 semiconductors by 2026. Additionally, the 14 nm MPW process service currently provided to domestic universities will also be offered to overseas universities.

The scene from the 'Samsung Foundry Forum 2023' held in Silicon Valley, USA /
[Photo by Samsung Electronics]

"Leading the Paradigm of the AI Era through AI Application and Edge Expansion"

At the Foundry Forum held last week in Silicon Valley, USA, Samsung Electronics announced plans to start mass production of the 2 nm process in 2025 and gradually expand applications to high-performance computing (HPC) and AI fields by 2027. The company also reaffirmed plans to mass-produce the 1.4 nm process in 2027. Furthermore, it launched the Multi-Die Integration (MDI) Alliance, an advanced packaging consortium, aiming to lead the beyond-Moore era that surpasses Moore's Law.

Samsung Electronics will mass-produce foundry products at Pyeongtaek Line 3 in the second half of this year and operate Taylor Line 1 in the second half of 2024. It will also start an 8-inch gallium nitride (GaN) power semiconductor foundry service in 2025. The company announced plans to concretize strategies to flexibly respond to diverse customer demands.

At the keynote speech of the Foundry Forum, Choi Si-young, president of Samsung Electronics Foundry Business Division, said, "The application areas of AI are rapidly expanding, and especially the edge, specialized for various individual services, will grow explosively. We will lead the paradigm of the AI era through advanced processes specialized for high-performance AI semiconductors, differentiated specialty processes, and close and proactive cooperation with global IP partners."

Samsung Electronics plans to hold the Samsung Foundry Forum in Europe and Asia in the second half of the year as well.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.