South Korea Leading Neuromorphic Chip R&D

The United States and China are leading the AI chip industry. At the same time, the United States and South Korea are ahead of the others in the neuromorphic chip segment of the industry. According to the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the number of AI chip-related patent applications has more than tripled since 2016.

An AI chip simultaneously processes a huge amount of data with low power and its computation capacity is about 1,000 times that of a non-AI chip. At present, the industry is evolving into the third generation of neuromorphic chip utilization past the CPU- and GPU-based first generation and FPGA- and ASIC-based second generation. A neuromorphic chip is characterized by imitating human neurons and synapses to operate with a completely new structure.

“The patent application counts of the United States and China account for 37 percent and 36 percent of the total, respectively,” the office explained, adding, “The proportions of South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are 8 percent, 6 percent and 2 percent, respectively.” It also said that South Korea’s proportion is 18 percent in the neuromorphic chip segment, where those of Japan and Taiwan are 4 percent and 2 percent, respectively.
 

When it comes to enterprise rankings in the AI chip industry, Intel, IBM and Samsung Electronics are taking the lead. In the neuromorphic chip segment, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are currently the second- and fifth-largest companies in the world, respectively.