AMD CEO Lisa Su Visits Samsung to Secure HBM Supply and Expand Partnership

AMD chief executive Lisa Su is visiting South Korea to secure additional high-bandwidth memory supplies for artificial intelligence accelerators amid soaring demand, tomshardware.com reported. The visit comes less than seven months after the chip designer signed a memorandum of understanding with Samsung covering memory supply and collaboration. Meanwhile, Samsung is seeking a broader partnership that turns its memory supply relationship into foundry chip production orders, according to Chosun.biz.

Samsung Foundry Seeks Broader Partnership Orders

According to Chosun.biz, Samsung aims to establish a more extensive collaboration, intending to transition its memory supply ties with AMD into contracts for foundry chip production. During press interactions in South Korea, Lisa Su addressed the expansion goals. We are going to talk about our broader partnership, Lisa Su said when asked by reporters about what she planned to discuss with Samsung’s executives, adding, We have many partners at Samsung.

The non-binding memorandum of understanding signed in March covers four specific areas over a three-year period. Those areas include the supply of next-generation memory products like HBM4 and advanced DDR5, co-development and optimization of memory solutions for AI and high-performance computing systems, exploration of foundry manufacturing opportunities for future AMD platforms, and co-optimization of advanced packaging and related semiconductor technologies.

AMD Views South Korean Memory Makers as Strategic Partners

Prior to their stop at Samsung’s main offices, Lisa Su and Jack Huynh, who serves as AMD’s senior vice president and general manager for the Computing and Graphics Group, were present at the AMD Gamer Day event. At the gathering, Su and Huynh answered questions from South Korean journalists and called local memory makers important strategic partners, reflecting the significance of data center-grade DDR5 and high-bandwidth memory for the company’s AI and data center businesses. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are key supply-chain partners for AMD, Su said, according to Chosun. AI demand is extremely high, so we are planning our long-term supply chain with our partners. It is important to plan three to five years ahead with our partners.

While Samsung has become a principal supplier of HBM4 for AMD’s Instinct MI400-series accelerators, expanding collaboration beyond memory supply remains complicated. The move involves considerable efforts to design chips for Samsung Foundry’s process technologies alongside risks associated with a product ramp at a new contract chipmaker. AMD already uses Samsung Foundry and UMC to manufacture integrated circuits in the form of programmable logic devices, but moving production of more advanced products to Samsung carries distinct operational hazards.

AMD Shipments Begin Despite Manufacturing Risks

Samsung badly needs major customers like AMD, and AMD's dependence on high-bandwidth memory supply gives Samsung an advantage in negotiations. However, AMD outlines specific manufacturing risks in its corporate disclosures. If we transition the production of some of our products to new manufacturers, we may experience delayed product introductions, lower yields or poorer performance of our products, AMD wrote in its most recent Annual Report.

Despite those manufacturing considerations, hardware deployment is already moving forward. AMD has started shipments of its Instinct MI455 accelerators featuring 432GB of HBM4 memory onboard, as well as rack-scale Helios AI systems, to interested parties. We have started shipping our next-generation MI455 and Helios systems, Su told journalists, according to Chosun. These are all systems that use HBM4.

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