Samsung Electronics has officially started the mass production of next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips. The company is reportedly making the first-generation chip called “Warboy,” a neural network processing unit (NPU), after taking an order from AI-specialized fabless FuriosaAI in a 14-nm process.
The second-generation Warboy chip will be based on 5-nm process with improved performance and the company will bring it in the H1 2024. The AI silicon chip can be used for image and video analytics, traffic management and autonomous driving.
For now, AI platforms are powered by graphics processing units (GPUs) that can simultaneously perform many computations in parallel. More than 10,000 high-performance Nvidia A100 GPUs for data centers were used to realize ChatGPT services.
NPUs were designed exclusively for AI to compensate for the weaknesses of GPUs such as high power consumption and high prices. Their processing speed is 10 times faster than that of GPUs.
Samsung Electronics is also looking to increase its AI semiconductor production capacities by significantly ramping up facility investment. Production Line P4 is being built on the Pyeongtaek campus in Korea with the goal of starting operation early next year. It will spend 300 trillion won (US$228 billion) to build the world’s largest semiconductor cluster in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province of Korea by 2042.