Semiconductor design house AD Technology is raising expectations for external growth by signing supply contracts one after another. In particular, it appears to be growing its position in the industry by producing results in its key areas of artificial intelligence (AI), automotive, and high-performance computing (HPC).
◇ Started development of autonomous driving chips with BOS Semiconductor
According to AD Technology, on the 22nd of this month, Bos Semiconductor, a fabless startup that designs system-on-chip (SoC) system semiconductors for vehicles, and Samsung Electronics Foundry (semiconductor consignment production) have begun developing automotive semiconductors based on the 5 nanometer (1nm is 1 billionth of a meter) process. The plan is to produce and verify the autonomous driving neural network processing accelerator (NPU Accelerator) SoC as a multi-project wafer (MPW) prototype next year and then begin mass production later.
Since advance payments, intermediate payments, and balance payments are received at different times until mass production, sales are expected to be divided in installments from next year until 2026, which is expected to be the time of mass production. The NPU accelerator developed by the two companies is a key element of the autonomous driving system and is responsible for accelerating data processing of neural network models used to perceive the surrounding environment and make decisions.
An official from AD Technology said, “Bos Semiconductor aims to implement superior power efficiency compared to competitors through built-in high-performance, low-power NPU and software optimization to be installed in level 4 or higher autonomous driving systems.”
◇ Achieving the goal of 1 trillion won in sales by 2030
In October last year, AD Technology signed a contract with Videantis, a German AI semiconductor company, to develop an advanced autonomous driving SoC. The plan is to create a semiconductor that can implement autonomous driving level 4 by combining the automotive AI platform developed by AD Technology with an image processing chip made by fabless Vidiantis, and mass-produce it in Samsung Electronics’ 5-nano process.
The design house’s sales structure is largely divided into development and mass production sales. As Vidiantis and Bose Semiconductor have successively won development contracts in the automotive field, it is expected that external growth can be expected if both companies proceed smoothly from development to mass production. AD Technology is actively carrying out sales activities to win orders, especially in the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), AI, and HPC fields, and is making progress one by one. Through this, the goal was to achieve 1 trillion won in sales by 2030.
In July of last year, it was announced that it had signed a contract to develop and supply customized semiconductor design for servers worth 22.4 billion won. AD Technology’s cumulative sales as of the second quarter of this year were approximately 38.5 billion won, a significant decrease compared to 117.3 billion won in the same period last year. As it is accumulating orders in the automotive and AI fields, the company expects to gradually recover its existing sales of hundreds of billions of won.