00:02You're listening to AI PRISM, from Seoul Economic Daily.
00:06Samsung just made a board-level call that would have been unthinkable a few years ago,
00:11handing part of its most advanced memory chip to rival TSMC.
00:16The move comes as China's CXMT claims a seven-fold jump in quarterly revenue
00:21and closes in on Korea's memory lead.
00:24Behind both stories is the same number.
00:27Global demand for high-bandwidth memory is set to outpace supply by double digits next year.
00:33Meanwhile, Korea's semiconductor giants are quietly locking in their own workforce
00:38as job switching hits a record low.
00:41And in Washington, a stalled shipbuilding policy could reshape how allied supply chains get built.
00:47It's Monday, October 19th.
00:49Let's look at a business story shaping corporate Korea.
00:53Samsung Electronics has long built both halves of its HBM chips in-house.
00:58But NVIDIA's custom NVHBM design needs base dies made on advanced logic processes
01:04Samsung's own foundry can't yet match at scale.
01:08The shift comes as China's CXMT accelerates its DRAM roadmap,
01:13intensifying pressure on both Samsung and SK Hynix.
01:16Rising AI memory demand is colliding with a structural supply shortage,
01:21forcing Samsung to rethink a model it has guarded for years.
01:25Here's what the numbers show.
01:27Samsung Electronics will build the base die for NVIDIA's custom NVHBM chip
01:31on TSMC's 3nm process instead of its own foundry, at NVIDIA's request.
01:38TSMC's 3nm yield runs above 90%,
01:42compared with roughly 60% for Samsung's competing 2nm process,
01:47according to industry estimates.
01:48The custom design cuts the chip's interface area by 60%
01:53to fit a built-in memory controller,
01:55boosting bandwidth up to 30%
01:57and cutting power use 15% versus standard HBM4E.
02:02Global HBM demand is projected to rise 91% next year
02:07to about 61.5 billion gigabits, according to UBS,
02:11while new supply reaches only 54.6 billion gigabits,
02:15a roughly 10% shortfall.
02:18CXMT guided third-quarter revenue up as much as 619% year-on-year
02:24to 114.7 to 119.7 billion yuan,
02:29or roughly 22.9 to 23.9 trillion yuan,
02:33about 17.1 to 17.8 billion dollars,
02:38and proposed a buyback nearly triple the sector norm.
02:41Semiconductor industry job switching fell roughly 50% in the first half of this year
02:46as record profits lock existing staff in place,
02:50even as entry-level postings rose 47%.
02:53The U.S. Department of Defense requested $1.85 billion
02:57to evaluate Allied shipyards, including Korea's,
03:01for building naval vessels,
03:03a plan still constrained by a House defense bill
03:06restricting foreign-built warships.
03:08Samsung is simultaneously testing
03:10whether its own 2-nanometer foundry
03:12can qualify for NVHBM-based dies,
03:16in case TSMC's capacity falls short of demand.
03:19So what does this mean for C-suite leaders with operations in Korea?
03:23Earlier, we said Samsung made a board-level call
03:26to hand part of its most advanced chip to a rival.
03:29Here's what that actually means for you.
03:31Single-sourcing your most critical component
03:34is no longer a safe default,
03:36even for the world's largest chip maker.
03:40Watch whether Samsung's own 2-nanometer line
03:43qualifies for NVHBM production.
03:45That would signal the TSMC arrangement is a stopgap,
03:49not a permanent restructuring of Samsung's supply chain.
03:52Watch the U.S. House defense bill
03:54on foreign-built warships
03:56and Korea's hiring data together.
03:58Both are early signals
03:59of whether allied supply chains,
04:01from chips to ships,
04:03are about to be redrawn.
04:05That's today's AI Prism, CEO.
04:08This episode was produced with AI assistants
04:10based on Seoul Economic Daily reporting
04:13and reviewed by a human editor.
04:15AI Prism is a Juan Ifra award-winning series.
04:18We'll be back tomorrow.
04:20You've been listening to AI Prism
04:22from Seoul Economic Daily.
