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| Samsung Electronics manufactures self-driving chips of U.S. chip design company Ambarella. Courtesy of Samsung Electronics |
Korean chipmaker produces Ambarella's self-driving chips
By Baek Byung-yeul
Samsung Electronics is closing in on TSMC in the foundry business, which manufactures chips ordered by chip design companies. The global No. 2 foundry maker said Tuesday that it will begin producing chips for autonomous driving vehicles of U.S. chip design company Ambarella.
Samsung said it produces Ambarella's CV3-AD685 automotive AI central domain controller chips using its 5-nanometer processing technology.
Based in the U.S., Ambarella is a chip design company that develops high-performance and low-power-consuming semiconductors for autonomous driving. Samsung said the CV3-AD685 is the first production version of Ambarella's CV3-AD family of automotive AI central domain controllers.
Samsung said its 5-nanometer processing technology "is optimized for automotive-grade semiconductors with extremely tight process controls and advanced intellectual property (IP) for exceptional reliability and outstanding traceability," adding that its processing technology helps improve neural network processing speed 20 times faster than the previous generation.
Securing manufacturing deals using 5-nanometer technology is expected to further increase the company's foundry capability. Applying the latest chip processing technology is becoming important in the making of in-vehicle chips that are required to process enormous amounts of data rapidly so as to prevent accidents.
"We look forward to seeing many automotive clients experience the outstanding performance of Ambarella's SoC (system on chip)," Sim Sang-pil, executive vice president and head of Foundry Corporate Planning at Samsung, said.
Samsung has been working on improving its competitiveness by actively investing in this business. The company currently operates or plans to add foundry facilities in Hwaseong, Giheung and Pyeongtaek in Korea and Austin and Taylor in the United States.
For the first time in the industry, Samsung began producing chips using 3-nanometer technology in June 2022 by applying gate-all-around (GAA) transistor architecture. The company aims to apply 2-nanometer technology in 2025 and 1.4-nanometer technology in 2027.
Though the entire semiconductor market is expected to hit a snag this year, the industry view is that the global foundry will continue to grow as more devices begin to adopt semiconductors.
Market tracker Omdia estimated that the sales of the global foundry market in 2022 were at around $121.9 billion and grew by 2.7 percent to $125.2 billion. Though the growth rate slowed due to sluggish market conditions, the foundry market will grow 12.7 percent in 2024 compared to 2023 and is expected to grow at an annual average growth rate of 10.3 percent from 2023 to 2028.
Not only Qualcomm, Tesla and AMD but also many firms in high-performance computing, network and automotive industries sending orders to Samsung to produce their chips. Thanks to its efforts to secure more clients, Samsung's foundry customers more than doubled in 2022 compared to 2019 and the number is expected to increase more than five times in 2027.
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