A team of graduate students from Yonsei University won the Presidential Award at the National Semiconductor Design Competition for their design technology related to high-bandwidth memory (HBM).
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korean Intellectual Property Office held the award ceremony on October 15 at COEX in Seoul. About 100 attendees, including award-winning students and semiconductor industry representatives, participated in the event.
The National Semiconductor Design Competition is held annually to enhance the semiconductor design capabilities of university and graduate students and to discover creative ideas. This year, a total of 73 projects were submitted, with 21 projects selected as finalists after preliminary and final evaluations. The awards included one Presidential Award, one Prime Minister's Award, four Minister of Industry Awards, two Korean Intellectual Property Office Awards, and 13 private sector awards.
The Presidential Award went to a team represented by student Lee Jeong-hyeon from Yonsei University. The team developed a high-speed data receiver design technology applicable to HBM, which enhances the data transmission performance and energy efficiency of memory semiconductors.
The Prime Minister's Award was won by a team from Seoul National University of Science and Technology, led by student Choi Da-hoon, for designing a cache compression-based accelerator to improve the inference performance of large language models (LLMs).
The Minister of Industry Awards were presented to teams from four universities: Seoul National University, Pusan National University, Chung-Ang University, and Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology. These teams showcased design technologies in various fields, including high-frequency circuits, AI computation accelerators, and low-power semiconductors for smart glasses.
Participants utilized semiconductor design software supported by sponsoring companies such as Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, LX Semicon, and Telechips to turn their ideas into tangible results. Before the award ceremony, a seminar was held to demonstrate six major award-winning projects and share trends in semiconductor design technology.
Last year, at the 26th Design Competition, students from 21 universities participated, with 21 projects receiving awards. The Presidential Award was given to a team from Seoul National University, and many HBM-related designs were recognized due to the growing demand for AI accelerators. This year, HBM data receivers and AI inference accelerators were also among the major award winners, continuing the trend of technological development in high-performance memory and AI semiconductors.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy plans to continue supporting young talents in the semiconductor design field to help them secure competitiveness in the industry. Choi Woo-hyuk, Director of Advanced Industry Policy at the ministry, stated, "The government will actively support students who will lead our country's semiconductor design industry to challenge themselves and grow."
* This article has been translated by AI.
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