It’s reported that Samsung turns to China to avoid wasting the semiconductor business.
The Financial Times cited a well -known source on Monday, and introduced that the take care of Baidu, China, was made in the USA in the USA with the losing its position in the USA and overwhelming Washington’s regulations.
Based on the report, Samsung has invested lots of of billions of dollars in US production facilities, but has reached out to the Chinese technology group to support the sluggish semiconductor division because of difficulties in securing large US customers.
Within the face of the US’s export control, Chinese firms rush to secure inventory of advanced AI chips, and Samsung’s exports to China increased by 54%in 2023-2024. Particularly, last yr, Baidu’s semiconductor design subsidiary, Kun Rune, has sold greater than three years of logic die (components essential for the manufacture of AI chip).
The news said that it appeared within the midst of the rise of trade tensions between the USA and China.
Last yr, Samsung announced that it could invest $ 40 billion in expanding Texas’s advanced chip manufacturing and packaging facilities, which received a subsidy of as much as $ 6.4 billion from the US government. Nevertheless, Samsung’s chip manufacturing business had difficulty in securing large US customers and lost its market share to TSMC in Taiwan.
“Samsung and China need one another,” said the co -director of the CW Nomura Asia -Pacific Stock Research. “Chinese firms are more necessary for Samsung, but it’s going to not be easy to do business together.”
One other necessary chip, the high -bandwidth memory market, was also behind the rival SK Hynix. SK Hynix supplied HBM to NVIDIA, and last yr’s quarterly operating profit surpassed Samsung for the primary time in history.
Jimmy Goodrich RAND Research Institute, senior adviser, said, “Chinese firms haven’t any opportunity to purchase SK Hynix’s HBM due to all of the leading AI chip producers reminiscent of NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and Broadcom.”
“Samsung produces it’s a superb enough product for China. There is no such thing as a HBM alternative in China yet.”
Based on the consulting firm, Semi Annlysis, Samsung is the biggest company that supplies HBM to China, and is used for Huawei’s Ascend 910 series AI chip.
Samsung’s contract chip manufacturing division also cooperated with Kunlun and produced the Core P800, which was released in February. Samsung HBM was also integrated into this chip.
One source said Samsung wanted to provide a way more advanced AI chip in cooperation with Kunlun, however the project was suspended because of the brand new restrictions of the USA, which was effective in January.
An official near Samsung said, “After the strong US export control in January, the business with Baidu has develop into uncertain,” he added.
Goodrich’s advisor stressed that there is no such thing as a sign that Samsung violated the US regulations in relation to the production of AI chips for Kun Rune or supplying logic die to Baidu subsidiaries.
Nevertheless, he said, “The undeniable fact that Samsung produces a really competitive chip in Baidu will query whether the US regulation ought to be adjusted,” he said.
Samsung said, “We’re strictly complying with the export regulations set by the US government.”
By Jang Se -min, reporter semim99@aitimes.com
