Choi Jeong-min, project leader at Samsung Electronics' foundry division technology development office. Choi received the Korea Engineer Award in recognition of his work developing the 4nm ultra-low-power semiconductor process applied to the HBM4 base die. [Samsung Electronics Newsroom]
Choi Jeong-min, project leader at Samsung Electronics' foundry division technology development office. Choi received the Korea Engineer Award in recognition of his work developing the 4nm ultra-low-power semiconductor process applied to the HBM4 base die. [Samsung Electronics Newsroom]

Choi Jeong-min, a project leader at Samsung Electronics' foundry division technology development office, joined the company in 2001 and began his career in the memory chip division. He spent eight years developing and mass-producing high-speed SRAM, building expertise that would later prove invaluable.

Choi transferred to the foundry division in a late-2008 personnel reshuffle. Starting with the 45-nanometer process, he has spent the 18 years since developing a wide range of logic products and overseeing their mass production.

That accumulated experience is embedded in Samsung Electronics' sixth-generation high bandwidth memory — HBM4 — which the company became the first in the world to ship in mass production in February.

With HBM4, Samsung Electronics made a bold bet by applying its cutting-edge foundry 4nm process to the base die for the first time. The base die connects stacked DRAM chips to a GPU, efficiently managing the flow of data and signals between them.

In an interview published Thursday on Samsung Electronics' semiconductor newsroom, Choi said he "contributed to the development and mass production of the HBM4 base die by proactively introducing 4nm ultra-low-power process technology," adding that "this technology enabled us to increase data processing speeds."

Choi focused on reducing the height of the three-dimensional FinFET transistors that make up the semiconductor chip and shrinking the contact size within the device to lower capacitance. Reducing capacitance — the ability to store electrical charge — is key to cutting the power a chip consumes. The technology developed through this work was applied to mass-produced products and delivered strong results.

Choi received the Korea Engineer Award in March in recognition of his development of the 4nm ultra-low-power semiconductor process that strengthened the competitiveness of the HBM4 base die. The award recognizes outstanding engineers and is hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and administered by the Korea Industrial Technology Association.

Choi also said: "In the memory division, I gained experience in systematic mass production, and in the foundry division I have been working on preparing for future technologies and developing customized solutions tailored to customer needs. The hands-on experience I have accumulated has been great nourishment."

Within Samsung Electronics, Choi's award is seen as recognition not merely of a research and development achievement, but of the core technological capability that will drive the recovery of the foundry business's competitiveness.

The competitiveness of the 4nm process applied to the HBM4 base die is drawing particular attention. According to industry sources, Samsung's foundry 4nm process has reached full-capacity operation. Nvidia's AI inference chip, the Groq 3 LPU, is also produced using Samsung's foundry 4nm process.

Higher utilization rates translate directly into improved profitability for the foundry business, and expectations are growing that Samsung's foundry operations — which have posted sustained losses — are on the verge of an earnings turnaround.

Samsung Electronics applied the same in-house foundry 4nm process-based base die to its seventh-generation HBM4E as it did with HBM4. The company was the first in the industry to deliver 12-layer HBM4E samples to customers including Nvidia in May. HBM4E achieves operating speeds of up to 16 gigabits per second, up from 14 Gbps, extending Samsung's technological edge.

As the HBM market grows rapidly, the base die has emerged as a key battleground, and industry observers expect the importance of the foundry process used to produce it to keep rising.

Against that backdrop, analysts say Samsung Electronics' foundry business has become strategically more important than ever. With capabilities spanning memory chips, foundry, packaging and chip design, the company's strategy is to press its differentiated competitive strengths to accelerate its push into the AI semiconductor market.


joze@heraldcorp.com