Samsung Electronics to support 'small and medium fabless'... Accelerating system semiconductor ecosystem expansion 

Samsung Electronics is actively supporting South Korea's system semiconductor ecosystem to strengthen its competitiveness.

Samsung Electronics made an announcement on the 18th that it is speeding up win-win cooperation with South Korea's small and medium-sized businesses such as fabless and design houses since it announced 'plan to strengthen system semiconductor ecosystem' in April last year.

MPW (Multi-Project Wafer) program, which is essential for South Korea's small and medium fabless businesses' product development activities, is expanded to three to four times a year and supports not only 8-inch (200mm) but also cutting-edge processes with 12-inch (300mm) wafers.

Samsung Electronics is providing process technology and design infrastructure optimized for various applications such as battlefields, mobile devices, and security, and products that have been working with small and medium-sized companies since the announcement of measures to strengthen the ecosystem will be mass-produced in earnest from the end of this year.

In particular, Samsung Electronics has been providing technical education including layout, design methodology, and verification to improve competitiveness of South Korean fabless and design house companies since the second half of last year, and the satisfaction of its businesses is also high. 

Samsung Electronics has been operating 'SAMSUNG Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE)', which is a foundry ecosystem program, since 2018, and is making more efforts to strengthen cooperation with partners and customers.

Samsung Electronics has released 'SAFE Cloud Design Platform (SAFE-CDP)' to create an ecosystem that can be designed more conveniently by customers.

'SAFE-CDP', which was built by Samsung Electronics and Rescale (High Performance Computing) platform company called Rescale, is a service that provides a virtual design environment so that fabless customers can start designing chips anytime, anywhere they have ideas.


The service is a platform built to enable SWs of Ansys, Mentor a Siemens Business, Cadence, and Synopsys, an automated design SW company, to run on the public cloud.

Samsung Electronics' 'SAFE-CDP' reduces the burden on customers to invest in server expansion and helps them use computing resources that are needed for chip design and verification flexibly depending on the stage.

As a result of designing semiconductor chips for vehicles by utilizing Samsung Electronics' SAFE-CDP, 'Gaon Chips', which is a South Korean fabless company, has also achieved reduction of design period by about 30% compared to previous ones.

"Samsung's integrated design platform will lower entry barriers for small and medium fabless companies to enter the market," said Chung Kyu-dong, CEO of Samsung Electronics' Design Solution Partner (DSP). "It will serve as an opportunity for domestic companies to grow further due to improved product competitiveness."

In particular, it is expected that South Korean small and medium-sized businesses such as ADT (ADT) and Hana Tech will be able to design more competitive semiconductor products as they can reduce time and investment costs compared to building their own servers.

Park Jae-hong, vice president of Samsung Electronics' foundry business division in DS division, said, "Samsung Electronics' integrated design platform, which will be introduced along with Lycale, will serve as an important foundation for the fabless industry to move to a cloud-based design environment," adding, "We will continue to contribute to customers' release innovative products by strengthening foundry ecosystem."

Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics is speeding up its efforts to strengthen its foundry business by investing in Hwaseong and Pyeongtaek one after another, and plans to continue to expand its ecosystem by increasing accessibility for small and medium-sized Korean companies to use Samsung's cutting-edge process technology more conveniently. 

By Reporter Dong-ho Shin, Department of Growth Enterprises