Samsung Electronics said Wednesday it will start churning out artificial intelligence accelerators for China’s leading internet engine operator Baidu early next year.

The South Korean tech giant and Baidu have worked together to develop the cloud-to-edge AI accelerator, dubbed as Baidu Kunlun, built on the Chinese firm’s neural processor architecture as well as Samsung’s 14-nanometer process technology with its proprietary Interposer-Cube package solution.

Known as I-Cube technology, the chip integration solution is becoming more important as higher performance is required for AI, which connects a logic chip and high bandwidth memory with an interposer to provide higher density and bandwidth. 


The new chip offers 512 gigabytes per second memory bandwidth and supplies up to 260 Tera operations per second at 150 watts. It is three times faster than conventional graphic processing units or field-programmable gate array accelerating models.

The announcement marks the first collaboration between Korea’s top chipmaker and its major Chinese customer, which helps Samsung expand its chip foundry business portfolio to AI chips for high performance computing.

“Baidu Kunlun is a very challenging project since it requires not only a high level of reliability and performance at the same time, but is also a compilation of the most advanced technologies in the semiconductor industry,” said Ou Yang Jian, distinguished architect of Baidu.

“Thanks to Samsung’s state-of-the-art process technologies and competent foundry services, we were able to meet and surpass our goal to offer superior AI user experience.”

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)