“Recently, the performance declined due to a decrease in the mass project over the past few years, but it is expected to sharply rebound from the end of this year.”
CEO Park of AD Technology, recently met with Electronic Times and said, “Projects developed in line with Samsung Foundry will gradually enter mass production.”
ADTechnology was a TSMC partner in the past, but switched to a Samsung Foundry Design Solution Partner (DSP) in 2020. It supports design based on optimized design assets (IP) to enable customers to develop semiconductors suitable for Samsung Foundry and performs mass production optimization tasks.
The recent deterioration in performance was caused by a decrease in TSMC mass production projects. However, Samsung Foundry development projects have increased. Development contract sales increased annually from 199 billion won in 2021 to 38.9 billion won in 2022 and 59.3 billion won in 2023.
CEO Park said, “Development service sales are a leading indicator for DSP companies,” and added, “Orders are continuing not only in Korea but also in overseas markets, including the United States.” He emphasized, “If mass production projects accumulate, we will soon be able to achieve the level of 2021, which recorded the highest sales ever.”
AD Technology is also making changes to its main products. While memory controller design was previously the core, it is now focusing on automotive and high-performance computing (HPC) semiconductors as growth drivers after switching to Samsung Electronics Foundry DSP.
CEO Park said, “HPC chips are relatively large, and automotive semiconductors have difficult procedures such as separate certification not only for design but also for delivery,” and added, “We are expanding the HPC and automotive system-on-chip ( SoC ) platform to support customer design. “We will also gradually secure the necessary certifications related to automotive semiconductors by 2025.”
Currently, automotive semiconductors are being developed by receiving orders for autonomous driving system-on-chip (SoC) from Germany’s Videantis and Korea’s Boss Semiconductor. We have also received orders for 2-nano HPC semiconductors from overseas companies.
Labor plans to increase nearly twice the existing 500 people by 2025. We plan to enter the Chinese market after the United States and Germany. It is judged that demand will arise at Samsung Foundry, not TSMC and Intel, due to the US-China semiconductor power competition.