Samsung is collaborating with major clients on designing and manufacturing custom chips and that work is already starting to add to its revenue. — AFP
Technology giants are increasingly designing their own semiconductors to optimise everything from artificial intelligence tasks to server performance and mobile battery life. Google has the Tensor Processing Unit, Apple Inc has the A13 Bionic and Amazon.com Inc has the Graviton2. What the titans all lack, however, is a factory to build the new chips they are dreaming up.
Enter Samsung Electronics Co, which is planning a decade-long, US$116bil (RM480bil) push for their business. The South Korean company is investing heavily in the next step in miniaturising semiconductors, a process called extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV). It’s by far the priciest manufacturing upgrade Samsung has ever attempted, a risky bid to move beyond its established business of cranking out commoditised silicon and to leapfrog the incumbent leaders in the US$250bil (RM1bil) foundry and logic-chip industry.
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