Samsung Electronics introduces a fabless chip platform

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory chip producer, said Thursday it has launched a cloud-based design platform for local small fabless semiconductor companies to better foster the country's system chip industry.

The company introduced the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE) Cloud Design Platform, in collaboration with Rescale, a major high performance computing solutions provider.

The platform provides a virtual environment for chip design in the cloud, Samsung said. Chip design firms can also utilize various electronic design automation (EDA) tools from various vendors, including Ansys and Cadence, on the platform.

"By adopting Cloud Design Platform, customers can reduce the burden of building their own server infrastructure, while flexibly utilizing additional computing power required for chip design and verification." Samsung said. "Furthermore, they can take full advantage of Samsung's diverse foundry ecosystem which includes EDA, intellectual property [IP], cloud and design services offered by reputable partners."

Samsung said Gaonchips, one of its design solutions partners in Korea, already tested the platform and managed to reduce its chip design runtime by 30 percent compared with the current process.

The latest move is aimed at supporting local chip design firms in developing the country's system chip ecosystem that can be also helpful to its foundry business.

Samsung announced its support plan for the system chip industry last April and vowed to cooperate with local fabless companies. It currently supports multi-project wafer programs and other solutions for chip design.

Samsung plans to begin mass-producing its products with local fabless firms under the support project at the end of this year.

Yonhap