Arm VP highlights Korea as rising hub for AI semiconductor innovation

Eddie Ramirez, vice president of Infrastructure Business at Arm, speaks during a media briefing in Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of Arm

British semiconductor and software design company Arm is deepening its global influence on artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure as it strengthens engagement with Korea’s technology ecosystem and joins the board of directors at the Open Compute Project (OCP), setting the standard for open, converged AI data centers.

Eddie Ramirez, the company’s vice president of Infrastructure Business, emphasized Korea’s growing strategic importance in the global AI semiconductor landscape, describing it as a uniquely complete ecosystem that integrates the entire semiconductor value chain in one.

“(Korea) is one of the few markets that has every part of the supply chain here; from the foundry services, basic design services (to) key third party intellectual properties are all developed here in Korea, as well as a lot of the complex packaging,” he said during a media briefing at the company’s Arm Unlocked event in Seoul, Tuesday.

“It is also important because the Korean government has provided significant investment and (taken) AI as a strategic initiative. And so we are seeing a wealth of startup companies developing here in Korea as a result of this.”

He highlighted Arm’s partnership with local companies, Samsung Foundry, Rebellions and ADTechnology, joining hands to develop an innovative AI central processing unit (CPU) chiplet platform.

“I'm really excited to be able to share that this chip is now available in silicon and will change the power efficiency curve of AI computation going forward,” Ramirez said.

Arm reached a significant milestone with its recent appointment to the OCP board, which positions it to play a central role in shaping open and interoperable standards for AI data centers in the future.

“We are putting it into OCP to make a foundation specification that could be used across different computing architectures,” he said.

The move places Arm alongside other influential industry players such as AMD and Nvidia, further amplifying its influence in defining the next phase of cloud and AI infrastructure.

As part of its expanded board role, Arm is contributing a vendor-neutral foundation chiplet system architecture specification (FCSA) to OCP, aiming to boost innovation throughout the computing stack. FCSA addresses an industry demand for a framework that aligns to vendor and CPU architecture-neutral requirements.

“We face a massive power challenge: A single AI rack in 2025 is using the same amount of power as about 100 U.S. households, and delivering as much compute as a top supercomputer from 2020,” Mohamed Awad, Arm senior vice president of Infrastructure Business, said. “Addressing this challenge calls for the next phase of infrastructure, and open collaboration across a rapidly evolving ecosystem is vital.”