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Merck CCO confident in Korea's position in chip sector

Published: 20 Feb. 2025, 17:56 Updated: 20 Feb. 2025, 18:45

JIN EUN-SOO
[email protected]

Merck Korea Managing Director Kim Woo-kyu, left, and Merck Electronics Chief Commercial Officer Anand Nambiar pose for a photo at Semicon Korea 2025. [MERCK KOREA]

Merck Electronics Chief Commercial Officer Anand Nambiar reflected on Korea's unwithering position in the global semiconductor industry despite an impending restructuring of supply chains.

"Asia still represents 80 percent of the global semiconductor capacity," Nambiar said in a news conference held at a restaurant in Seoul on Thursday.

"Korea and Taiwan are leading countries where the capacity hasn't stalled. It is also where our leading edge customers are present. Countries consider semiconductor technology a national security interest. The U.S. has lost leading dominance in it and is trying to bring that back. Japan has also boosted their Chips Act funding and there's a new company, Rapidus, that's developing 2-nanometer [technology] with IBM. In India, it is still early and there is a long way to go. Asia will continue to be a major manufacturing hub."

Merck Electronics introduced its Materials Intelligence platform, which utilizes AI in the research and development of new materials for chip technology such as gate-all-around transistors, an upgraded structure of transistors that improves power-saving, and high bandwidth memory chips, to reduce time and resources spent on it.

Nambiar added that for Merck, the human brain acts as an inspiration to develop technology that exceeds its complexity.

"Merck is right at the heart of all challenges that we face today when we look at logic, whether it's yield enhancements, performance improvements or cost improvements," he said.

"We are solving this at the system level to try and bring better solutions to the market that solve basic problems like the power problem."

BY JIN EUN-SOO [[email protected]]