Korea Advised to Increase Investment in AI Chip Industry
U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol stressed the importance of the two countries’ technology alliance all the way through their recent summit. In this regard, experts point out that South Korea needs to increase its investment in the AI chip industry, which is still in the process of forming and closely linked to a variety of fields such as metaverse, autonomous driving, big data and the Internet of Things.
According to market research firm Gartner, more than 50 companies are currently working on the technology and the global AI chip market is expected to grow from US$34.3 billion to US$71.1 billion from 2021 to 2025.
The current leaders in the industry include Nvidia and Intel. Nvidia’s global GPU market share amounts to 90 percent and its developments include the Xavier chip for use in self-driving cars. Intel is planning to build a new plant in Columbus, Ohio by investing US$20 billion. Its next-generation Gaudi chips are expected to be manufactured there. Google, Huawei and Tesla are also developing AI chips successfully.
In South Korea, Samsung Electronics is working on neuromorphic technologies for simultaneous data storage and operation. In addition, it improved the AI function of its Exynos mobile processor so that large-scale data processing can be expedited within mobile devices. SK Hynix, SK Telecom and SK Square recently founded Sapeon in Silicon Valley and South Korea, and this new company is planning to release an inference-capable AI chip for data center use and a learning-capable AI chip next year.
Although the South Korean government is planning to support them by investing a lot of budget, experts point out what is most needed now is structural improvements. “South Korean colleges’ and research institutes’ technology levels are already pretty high, but the process of commercialization on the corporate side is still much slower than those in the United States and China,” said KAIST professor Yoo Hoe-joon, who has conducted AI chip research since 2006.
According to him, technological developments at colleges and research institutes need to lead to product manufacturing and investment, but the development and manufacturing sides are currently disconnected in South Korea. “When it comes to AI chip development by country, the government is playing a leading role in China and the market and investment are already large in the United States whereas investment is still far from sufficient in South Korea,” he said.