Lisa Su, chief executive of AMD, the world's second-largest graphics processing unit maker by market share, is returning to South Korea seven months after her last visit. Su is expected to meet domestic artificial intelligence chip companies during the trip to discuss expanding technology cooperation.
The Ministry of Science and ICT is arranging a roundtable on Oct. 8 between Su and executives of leading domestic AI accelerator startups to coincide with her visit, according to information technology industry sources on the 30th. The ministry is coordinating a schedule for talks between AMD and major Korean neural processing unit developers including FuriosaAI, Rebellions, DeepX, Mobilint and MangoBoost. A meeting between Su and Bae Kyung-hoon, deputy prime minister and minister of science and ICT, is also being pursued around the same date, sources said. Neither schedule has been finalized, as both remain in early stages of discussion.
Su plans to firm up cooperation plans between AMD and Korean AI accelerator companies during the visit. The Ministry of Science and ICT and AMD signed a memorandum of understanding in July to cooperate on the AI chip ecosystem. Under that agreement, the two sides agreed to develop an open heterogeneous AI computing architecture linking AMD's central processing units and graphics processing units with Korean-made neural processing units, and to run demonstrations in the country. The planned roundtable between Korean NPU companies and AMD was also designed as follow-up cooperation under that memorandum, sources said. "Once the schedule for the roundtable with CEO Su is confirmed, the specific agenda items will likely be set as well," an IT industry official said. "But the basic purpose of the roundtable is to discuss follow-up projects related to the memorandum signed in July."
Whether a second high-level meeting between Su and senior Samsung Electronics executives will take place is also drawing attention. During her March visit, Su attended a dinner at Seungjiwon in Seoul's Hannam-dong at the invitation of Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee, joined by Jun Young-hyun, vice chairman of the company's Device Solutions division, and other senior executives. The following day, she met Roh Tae-moon, president of Samsung Electronics' Device eXperience division, to discuss cooperation. With Samsung Electronics set to supply sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory, or HBM4, for AMD's next-generation GPUs, any additional meeting could open discussions on broadening cooperation beyond memory into mobile devices and AI PCs.
Whether Su will meet executives of SK hynix and LG Electronics is another point of interest. Both companies have recently expanded AI cooperation centered on Nvidia. If meetings materialize during Su's visit, the partnership between Korean companies and AMD could widen further.
