Samsung Electronics unveiled its strategy to strengthen the foundry industry ecosystem as it announced new design tools and technologies crucial for 3-nanometer process for its foundry customers at a forum on Thursday.

At its third annual Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem forum held online, the chipmaker‘s foundry unit said it has also secured over 80 electronic design automation tools and technologies optimized for semiconductor design infra and package solution.

It is pivotal for 3-nanometer (nm) gate-all-around (GAA) process technology, slated for production in the first half of 2022, according to the company.

“In the rapidly changing data-centric era, Samsung and its foundry partners have made great strides responding to increasing customer demand and to support their success by providing powerful solutions,” said Ryan Lee, senior vice president and head of foundry design platform development at Samsung Electronics during his keynote speech.

“With the support of our SAFE program, Samsung will lead the realization of the vision ‘Performance Platform 2.0’.”

The company also touched on its expansion of foundry business infrastructure over high performance computing (HPC), AI, electronic design automation (EDA), cloud, package solution and design solution partner (DSP).

The foundry business refers to making chip designs for other companies that do not have a semiconductor fabrication plant.

Samsung also introduced some of the performance achievements it has made through partnering with fabless companies. The chipmaker has been working with 12 global design solution partners to develop high-performance and low-energy semiconductor design for its fabless clients.

“Our longstanding partnership with Samsung Foundry has been essential for growing business opportunities in many markets for our combined partner ecosystem. This close collaboration continues as we work together to optimize our Armv9 next-generation processors on Samsung Foundry’s leading-edge processes, including GAA, to deliver a best-in-class solution that is optimized for the world of today, and the technologies of tomorrow,” said Simon Segars, CEO of a British semiconductor and software design company Arm.