사진 확대
Advanced Package Lab (APL), established by Samsung Electronics in Yokohama, Japan, with an investment of 350 billion won, held its opening ceremony and officially began semiconductor technology research.
According to industry sources on the 8th, Samsung Electronics held the ceremony at its Minato Mirai office in Yokohama, Japan, where APL is located. About 100 people attended, including Jun Young-hyun, vice chairman of the Samsung Electronics Device Solutions Division, as well as representatives from the Japanese government, local authorities, and partner companies. APL will serve as a key research hub connecting Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor design and manufacturing capabilities with Japan’s advanced ecosystem of materials, components, and equipment technologies. It will develop and validate elemental technologies, including materials and processes needed for next-generation packaging, a core technology for future semiconductors.
Yokohama, a major city near Tokyo, offers favorable conditions for securing specialized semiconductor researchers, with numerous leading universities and research institutions located there. The University of Tokyo and Yokohama National University are nearby, along with leading Japanese materials, components, and equipment companies such as Resonac and DISCO.
Samsung Electronics plans to continuously expand its local research workforce, securing more than 100 researchers by 2027. It also intends to develop Yokohama into a global research and development hub for next-generation packaging technologies. Samsung Electronics will invest 40 billion yen, or approximately 35 billion won, over five years beginning in 2024.
Samsung Electronics is investing in advanced packaging because the technology is one of the key factors that will determine the performance of artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors in the future. A representative application is connecting AI accelerators and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in a single package.
Advanced packaging is becoming a key technology that foundries need to attract customers.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) not only manufactures customers’ logic semiconductors on a contract basis but also provides packaging services. Samsung Electronics can offer an integrated turnkey service covering customers’ logic semiconductors, memory semiconductors, and packaging. Intel, which recently launched its foundry business, is seeking to attract initial customers with its EMIB-T packaging technology.
[Reporter Lee Deok-joo]
This article has been translated by GripLabs Mingo AI.