Samsung to launch its first AI accelerator chip in 2025

Samsung plans to launch an AI accelerator chip subsequent 12 months. The affirmation got here from the corporate’s President and co-CEO Kye Hyun Kyung throughout the just lately held annual shareholders’ assembly. Kyung stated the Korean agency has already accomplished the technological verification of the first-gen mannequin, Mach-1. The chip will arrive in early 2025.

Samsung will revolutionize the AI chip market in 2025

Main tech firms are vying to be on the forefront of the continuing AI revolution. Samsung, one of many greatest names within the tech trade, began making its transfer in 2023. It launched an LLM (Giant Language Mannequin) known as Samsung Gauss and adopted up with Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S24 series. Gauss powers a few of the AI options on the brand new flagships.

The Korean behemoth is now engaged on increasing these AI options to extra Galaxy units. It’s concurrently new methods to strengthen its grip on the AI market. It seems Samsung sees a giant alternative in AI chips, a market at present dominated by Nvidia. Samsung desires to interrupt the stronghold by introducing its AI accelerator chip as early as 2025.

The corporate has already made important progress in its improvement and plans to begin production later this 12 months. “Technological verification for Mach-1 has been accomplished by means of programmable chip (FPGA), and system-on-chip (SoC) design is in progress,” Kyung stated. “We’ll produce the chip by the top of the 12 months and see the AI ​​system made with our chip early subsequent 12 months.”

Kyung is likely one of the two CEOs of Samsung— Han Jong-hee is the opposite CEO. He’s additionally the Director of SAIT (Samsung Superior Institute of Expertise), the corporate’s analysis and improvement unit, and the pinnacle of the DS Division, i.e., the semiconductor unit. The Korean agency introduced a serious management shuffle on the finish of 2023 however didn’t change its CEOs.

Samsung could revolutionize the market with its first answer

Samsung’s first AI accelerator chip is claimed to deal with one of many greatest issues with these merchandise. The present crop of AI accelerators wrestle resulting from a bottleneck during AI inferencing. This results in a drop in knowledge transmission velocity and energy effectivity when exchanging data between the CPU, GPU, and reminiscence. Samsung goals to resolve these points.

In accordance with the Korean media, Mach-1 will characteristic an “unprecedented construction” able to decreasing this bottleneck by virtually 90%, i.e., to 1/eighth of present ranges. Because of its “lightweight” chip design, it’ll additionally scale back HBM (high-bandwidth reminiscence) use for AI semiconductors. Samsung hopes these developments will assist it topple Nvidia.

The American chipmaker at present provides AI accelerators to Microsoft, Meta, and different huge firms. Samsung, which has doubled down on its AI efforts these days, could be trying to steal a couple of clients from it. The Korean agency just lately established a synthetic normal intelligence (AGI) computing lab in Silicon Valley, USA. “The specialised lab is working to create a wholly new kind of semiconductor, a semiconductor designed to fulfill the processing necessities of future AGI,” Kyung stated.