Vice President Chang-kyu Choi, the Head of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, spoke on the importance of AI technology in sites of semiconductor manufacturing and in responding to market demands at the invited lectures of the ‘2022 AI Semiconductor Future Technology Conference’, which was held at the Creative Economy Innovation Center in Gyeonggi Province on the 12th.
Speaking on the topic of ‘Shaping the Future with AI and Semiconductors’, Vice President Choi revealed that, “Moving forward, we will unfold our AI strategy across the board, not only in the development area, such as in the semiconductor design and production process, but also with semiconductor demand prediction (materials, parts, equipment), supply chain management, and management as well.”
Samsung Electronics is expanding their AI technology application phase for the automation of semiconductor fab management. The range of AI application, which was previously limited to fab management monitoring, has been expanded in all directions, including things like process optimization, yield prediction, semiconductor measurement and inspection, and intelligent fab management.
Vice President Choi said that, “To produce the latest semiconductor products, we need to go through over 1000 steps of processing, and the time for wafers to go in and come out of fabrication takes around 3~6 months as well,” and went on to say that, “We are thinking of semiconductor fabrication as a massive automated machine as we apply AI.” Vice President Choi’s opinion is that AI technology is necessary to maximize semiconductor productivity in various processes and to shorten the time it takes for releasing into the market.
They have many obstacles to overcome. One of them is to make experience and know-how in various processes into data to raise AI utilization. Vice President Choi revealed that, “There is a need to make the research notes and individual know-how of engineers into data and analyze them with an AI algorithm,” and said that, “We need ideas to switch to more efficient processes in the areas of measurement and inspection, which utilizes a lot of AI technology.” He added that AI technology was needed for material development and supply as well. He emphasized that they needed to be able to determine the properties of materials with AI to bring forth the performance they want. He added that, “We operate the AI research center with the vision of making Samsung Electronics the semiconductor company that makes the best use of AI in the world.”
At the event, which was hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT, experts in the industry, academia, and in research stepped forward to introduce the direction of AI semiconductor technology and projections of the industry. Organizations, like the AI Semiconductor Forum, Next Generation Intelligence Semiconductor Foundation, and PIM Artificial Intelligence Semiconductor Project Group, shared various strategies to create an AI semiconductor market in Korea and to discover opportunities, and spoke about the state of the industry. There were also AI semiconductor technology demonstrations from companies in the industry and research institutions, such as SAPEON Korea, Telechips, Nextchip, Furiosa AI, DEEPX, Openedges Technology, Nepes, Eyenix, and ETRI.
By Staff Reporter Dong-joon Kwon (djkwon@etnews.com)