Consolidating the capabilities of 28 institutions including companies, universities, and government-funded research institutes
Developed 10 NPUs for Server, Mobile, Edge, and Common Fields
A total of 247.5 billion won is scheduled to be invested from this year to 2029.


To secure AI semiconductor technology capabilities, the Ministry of Science and ICT announced on the 23rd that it has selected implementing organizations for new projects in 2020 under the Next-Generation Intelligent Semiconductor Technology Development Project and will begin full-scale technology development.

The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy will invest 1.0096 trillion won in the next-generation intelligent semiconductor technology development project from 2020 to 2029, with 247.5 billion won of that amount allocated to the AI semiconductor design sector alone.

The new projects for 2020 were planned to be developed in the form of an industry-academia-research consortium by integrating each sub-project, unlike the existing individual project method, in order to share and link technologies by field and consolidate research results. Accordingly, a total of 4 consortia and 28 implementing organizations (16 companies, 10 universities, and 2 government-funded research institutes) were selected.

In particular, SK Telecom, Telechips, and Nextchip will participate as lead organizations for consortia in the server, mobile, and edge sectors, respectively, and are expected to play roles such as manufacturing and demonstrating SoCs that integrate development results from each field.

The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to invest 28.8 billion won in 2020 alone. For new projects in 2020, it aims to commercialize 10 Neural Processing Units (NPUs) across server, mobile, edge, and common fields that feature high computational performance and power efficiency. In addition, it plans to secure AI semiconductor platform technology through integrated development that includes ultra-high-speed interfaces and software.

First, in the server sector, a consortium of 15 organizations including SK Telecom will invest a total of 70.8 billion won over up to eight years to develop NPUs and interfaces that can be used in high-performance servers such as cloud data centers.

The consortium plans to integrate the NPUs and interfaces developed in each sub-project to develop a server (module) with performance of 2 PFLOPS (1 trillion floating-point operations per second) or higher, and apply it to SK Telecom's cloud data center, etc. In addition, there are plans to promote the international standardization of the ultra-high-speed interface development results and apply them to SK Hynix's next-generation memory controllers and other applications.

Through the second phase follow-up project (2025~2029), we plan to develop a 1 PFLOPS-class NPU by combining the results of low-power new device development and design technology currently being pursued in the device field of the next-generation intelligent semiconductor technology development project.

In the mobile sector, a consortium of 11 organizations including Telechips will invest a total of 46 billion won over five years to develop NPUs that can be used in mobile devices such as autonomous vehicles and drones.

The consortium plans to integrate the NPUs developed in each sub-project and apply them to Telechips' automotive semiconductor products, thereby entering the market for semiconductors for autonomous vehicles, such as ADAS.

In the edge sector, a consortium of 17 organizations including Nextchip will invest a total of 41.9 billion won over five years to develop NPUs that can be used in IoT devices such as video security, audio equipment, and biometric authentication security devices.

The consortium plans to apply the developed results to Nextchip's video security devices (CCTV, black box, etc.) and Octaco's biometric authentication security devices.

In the common field, ETRI and KAIST will invest a total of 5.26 billion won over five years to develop high-efficiency, low-power (1mW-class) PIM (Processing-In-Memory) semiconductor technology by integrating MRAM and NPU.

The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy plan to manage project-specific performance and commercialization through a pan-governmental project team scheduled to launch in the first half of this year, and plan to implement flexible goal management to enable early commercialization by taking into account global market trends.

We plan to review performance targets for each sub-project through annual evaluations involving experts every year and adjust targets (Moving Target) so that products with sufficient market competitiveness can be developed.

Minister Choi Ki-young of the Ministry of Science and ICT stated, “This project is part of a preliminary feasibility study prepared jointly with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy regarding device, design, equipment, and process technologies,” adding, “We plan to expand existing R&D achievements to the private sector and support private sector technological innovation, such as next-generation PIM technology.”