South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT has begun on-site checks at major AI companies as it moves to speed adoption of Korean-made neural processing units, or NPUs.
The ministry said it visited SK Telecom’s Incheon data center and LG AI Research on the 29th to review how domestic AI semiconductors are being used in real services and to hear feedback from companies.
The visit was arranged to assess the rollout of Korean-made NPUs. At SK Telecom’s Incheon data center, Lee Do-gyu, director general for ICT Policy at the ministry, toured the site with Park Byeong-gwan, head of SKT’s core platform, and Park Seong-hyeon, CEO of Rebellions.
Servers installed there use Rebellions’ data center NPUs, ATOM and ATOM MAX.
Park said SKT is applying servers based on ATOM and ATOM MAX to A.Dot’s phone-call summary service and to X Caliber, a companion-animal video diagnostic support service. He said the company plans to keep expanding commercial services based on ATOM MAX.
SKT said A.Dot’s call-summary service, built on its in-house large language model A.Dot X (A.X), handles up to 50 million API calls a day.
At LG AI Research, the ministry was briefed on AI service development that combines the institute’s in-house large language model EXAONE with FuriosaAI’s NPU, Renegade (RNGD).
Renegade is a Korean-made AI chip that uses high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, and is designed to deliver the data-processing performance needed to run large AI models. The ministry described it as a case of building an “AI full stack” by pairing a domestic LLM with a domestic semiconductor.
Lee said the ministry confirmed on the ground that Korean-made AI semiconductors are being applied to real services. He said the government will continue policy support so AI chips that have entered full-scale mass production can spread quickly in the market.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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