Samsung flexes AI chip muscles ahead of Altman visit

Samsung Electronics Co. will go all out to win the AI chip race with its most advanced AI memory chip products, its semiconductor business head said before his one-on-one meeting with OpenAI’s chief visiting South Korea on Friday.  

“AI is fundamentally reshaping the nature of computing,” Samsung Electronics Device Solutions Division Chief Executive Kyung Kye-hyun wrote on his social media account on Wednesday. “AI is everywhere.”

“A new era has just begun. Wherever AI takes us, we are committed to empowering it.”

Kyung made the comments after thanking those who demonstrated Samsung Electronics’ latest AI chip technologies at CES 2024 earlier this month.

At this year’s electronics show, Samsung Electronics unveiled a variety of its next-generation semiconductor products, especially the latest memory chip technologies for AI computing, including the high-bandwidth memory 3E (HBM3E), dubbed "Shinebolt”, the HBM-PIM designed to improve the efficiency of data processing and the CXL-PNM.

PIM stands for processing-in-memory, while CXL is a computer express link.

PIM is a memory processor integrated with random access memory (RAM) on a single chip, which speeds up the overall processing of tasks. It helps process data like a central processing unit (CPU).

CXL is a next-generation interface that adds efficiency to accelerators, dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and storage devices used with CPUs in high-performance server systems.

“Our customers wanted to know Samsung Electronics’ plans for AI during CES 2024, and I am proud that we have answered their questions,” said Kyung.

OPENAI’S AI ACCELERATOR AMBITION

Kyung will meet Sam Altman, chief executive of Microsoft-backed OpenAI and ChatGPT creator, who will visit Seoul on Friday.

The world’s most famous AI startup is said to be seeking to self-develop and produce an AI accelerator, or a neural processing unit designed to accelerate artificial intelligence and machine learning applications.

Samsung Electronics is the world’s only company capable of both developing high-capacity, high-performance memory chips for AI accelerators and providing necessary foundry services.

While the agenda is unknown, the meeting will take place at Samsung Electronics’ chip manufacturing plant in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province.

Samsung’s Pyeongtaek Campus sits on a 3,927,912-square-meter plot of land. The memory giant operates three semiconductor manufacturing plants on the campus now and is constructing its fourth and fifth plants. It plans to add the sixth one later. 

The company is forecast to spend a total of 200 trillion won ($150 billion) to complete the Pyeongtaek Campus. The site is rarely open to the public.

Altman is also expected to meet SK Hynix Inc. CEO Kwak Noh-jung as well as officials from Korean fabless startups during his less than 24-hour stay in Korea.  

He will come to Korea after visiting Taiwan. After Seoul, he will fly to Japan. 

OpenAI chief came to Seoul last summer to attend a roundtable meeting with dozens of Korean startup heads. He met Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol during his last stay in the city.  

AI CHIP RACE HEATS UP

Global competition to lead the AI chip technology is intensifying amid growing demand for generative AI and on-device AI technologies.

The world’s No. 1 memory producer Samsung Electronics is said to be behind its crosstown rival SK Hynix, which is the runner-up in the global memory market, in an AI memory chip race.

The No. 2 memory player on Thursday reported solid earnings for the last quarter of last year, a turnaround after snapping the four-consecutive-quarter losing streak thanks to robust sales of its high-value and high-performance chips such as HBM3 and double data rate 5 (DDR5) chips.

Samsung Electronics is slated to announce its financial results for the same quarter on Wednesday next week.

Its semiconductor division is forecast to log more than 13 trillion won in loss for the full 2023.

The company plans to double its HBM chip production volume this year from last year to take the lead in the AI chip segment, Han Jin-man, executive vice president responsible for Samsung's US semiconductor business, said during a media session at CES 2024 earlier this month.

Write to Jeong-Soo Hwang at hjs@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.