▲SWM-KRM agreement signing ceremony (Photo provided by KRM)

KRM and SWM Partner to Target Global Autonomous Vehicle Market
Synergy in the semiconductor, mobility, and robotics sectors is expected to be created through partnerships.

KRM Co., Ltd. announced on the 31st of last month that it has signed a global partnership agreement with SWM, a company specializing in autonomous driving system development, for a Level 4 autonomous driving platform and is pursuing full-scale entry into overseas markets.

SWM provides an integrated autonomous driving platform through autonomous driving hardware, software, and operational technology accumulated over 10 years, as well as big data and learning technologies. It also develops and operates AP-500, a high-performance computing system that satisfies Level 4 autonomous driving.

The company's high-performance computing system is a heterogeneous multi-core system that integrates NPU, CPU, and MCU, and is a commercial product that dramatically enhances AI operations and system stability through 1000 TOPS processing capability.

SWM has been recognized for its technological prowess in autonomous driving systems, winning the Innovation Award and the Presidential Citation at 'KES 2023'. As of last year, it has accumulated over 300,000 km of driving distance and over 7,000 TB of big data.

A self-driving car-based commercial transportation service business is already underway in Sangam, Seoul and Dalseong, Daegu. SWM plans to implement a zone-based service with a higher level of technical difficulty than the existing route-based service in the Gangnam pilot district of Seoul in September 2024, and to work on improving its existing technology.

Last May, KRM announced its ambition to pioneer new markets by building an integrated IP portfolio for AI platforms in the semiconductor IP and solution IP (AD·ADAS) fields, starting with AI NPU IP.

To this end, KRM has formed an internal task force to promote new businesses and announced plans to actively target new markets in future growth areas such as semiconductors, mobility, and robotics.

In particular, through this partnership agreement, the company will secure exclusive sales rights in Japan for SWM's autonomous driving level 4 platform, as well as global solution IP rights, which is expected to provide momentum to the IP business.

Through this agreement, the two companies agreed to create synergy through mutual cooperation in the fields of vehicle infotainment, electrical software, and hardware, and decided to cooperate to build an integrated autonomous driving system that combines the company's self-developed optimal software architecture and SWM's differentiated heterogeneous sensor fusion algorithm for the robot business's quadruped walking robot 'Vision 60'.

Park Gwang-sik, CEO of KRM, said, “We have recently experienced the full-scale expansion of the global autonomous vehicle market, with our major Japanese clients launching new mobility corporations,” and added, “We are very pleased that KRM is keeping pace with the times and working with SWM, which possesses outstanding technological prowess, to pioneer the global autonomous vehicle market, which will be a future growth engine.”

“KRM will utilize the global network it has secured through its automotive semiconductor business to develop automotive semiconductors.He added, “We plan to actively pursue the construction of an autonomous driving platform targeting OEMs and Tier 1s.”