Samsung Foundry has reportedly entered an R&D project in collaboration with the US-based AI semiconductor expert firms Groq and Tenstorrent, the latter of which is spearheaded by legendary chip engineer Jim Keller.
If the latter name rings a bell, it might be because you might recall that Jim Kepper came back to take the stage at Samsung Foundry Forum on June 9 after three years of absence. Previously, he worked on the AMD Zen architecture and did design work on application processors and autonomous driving systems for Apple and Tesla.
According to industry sources cited by Business Korea, Samsung, Groq, and Tenstorrent have entered a partnership to develop AI semiconductors that Samsung will use for advanced IT solutions.
Samsung to shake the foundry market
The nature of the project Samsung, Groq, and Tenstorrent have embarked on isn't clear. The report only mentions that if the partnership is fruitful and advances to the stages of mass production, it will lead to the manufacturing of chips through sub-5nm EUV processes using Samsung's 2.5D packaging facilities.
Furthermore, industry experts cited by the Korean publication say that if Samsung completes the project in collaboration with Groq and Tenstorrent, it could have “a significant impact on the foundry market.”
Qualcomm recently announced that its next-gen chips will boast on-device AI and Meta's Llama 2 large language models (LLM). And previously, Samsung's Kyung Kye-Hyun said that “the name of the game is semiconductors that can power AI.” Whether this means Samsung is working on Exynos chips with built-in AI LLM capabilities remains to be seen.
