Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, is set to visit South Korea next month. Following her official announcement of a partnership with Samsung Electronics on next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) memory in March, she is expected to broaden her engagements with domestic AI semiconductor companies and government officials, further strengthening the AI semiconductor alliance with South Korea.
According to industry sources on September 30, Su is scheduled to arrive in South Korea around October 8 to meet with executives from local neural processing unit (NPU) companies, including Rebellion, DeepX, and Mobilint. She is also reportedly planning a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT, Lee Kyung-sook.
Discussions are also underway for Su to meet with leaders of major domestic companies, including Samsung Electronics. During her visit in March, she toured Samsung's Pyeongtaek campus and signed a memorandum of understanding for next-generation AI memory and computing collaboration with Jeong Hyun-kyun, head of Samsung's Device Solutions division. She also had a separate dinner with Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong.
At that time, Samsung was selected as the preferred supplier of HBM4 for AMD's next-generation AI accelerator, the Instinct MI455X. The two companies also agreed to develop DDR5 solutions for AMD's next-generation EPYC processors and the Rackscale AI platform, Helios. They have left the door open for potential collaboration beyond memory, including foundry and advanced packaging services.
Industry analysts interpret Su's upcoming visit as a follow-up to expand the collaboration established in March into actual business ventures. Samsung has already been supplying HBM3E for AMD's existing MI350X and MI355X models, and if the partnership extends to foundry services, AMD could become a key customer for Samsung's memory, contract manufacturing, and packaging services.
Su's meetings with domestic NPU companies are also noteworthy. AMD is expanding its AI infrastructure ecosystem, which includes not only GPUs but also CPUs, networks, and software, to compete with Nvidia. Collaborations with South Korean AI semiconductor startups could lead to future partnerships in chip and software integration or data center operations.
Recently, AMD has rapidly entered the AI chip supply chains of global tech giants like Meta and OpenAI. As demand for AI accelerators grows, the importance of securing memory and foundry production capabilities, including HBM, is increasing. Attention is focused on whether additional collaboration plans with Samsung will be solidified during this visit.
* This article has been translated by AI.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.