- Second Vice Minister Ryu met with AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su to review follow-up measures under the MSIT–AMD MOU and discuss the latest global AI issues and ways to cooperate.
- MSIT arranged a meeting between Su and 13 companies in Korea’s AI semiconductor ecosystem to actively support their global partnerships and entry into global markets.
【Relevant National Task】
22. Securing “unmatched” frontier technologies and talent in artificial intelligence (AI).
The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister: Bae Kyung-hoon) announced that Second Vice Minister of Science and ICT Ryu Je-myung met with Lisa Su, Chair and CEO of semiconductor firm Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and held a roundtable meeting* with leaders of major companies in Korea’s AI semiconductor ecosystem at the Four Seasons Hotel Seoul on the morning of Wednesday, October 7.
* Korea AI Semiconductor & Startup Roundtable
The meeting and roundtable were organized as a follow-up to the MOU signed in July between MSIT and AMD, one of the outcomes of President Lee Jae Myung’s visit to San Francisco for the AI Summit. They were arranged on the occasion of Su’s visit to Korea to review cooperation between the two sides and explore new opportunities for partnership with Korean companies.
At the meeting, Second Vice Minister Ryu first reviewed with Su the progress of the cooperation projects under the MSIT–AMD MOU. The two sides agreed to move forward as planned with their cooperation projects, including establishing an AMD AI Center of Excellence (CoE) within the year and nurturing graduate-level talent in AI and AI transformation (AX).
In particular, Ryu stressed that as the AI inference market expands, the focus of the global race to build AI infrastructure is shifting from individual chips to entire systems and platforms. Accordingly, the two sides agreed to build heterogeneous computing infrastructure that combines AMD’s central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) with Korean AI semiconductors, linking the effort to various demonstration projects underway in Korea. They also agreed to develop this infrastructure into a tangible outcome of their cooperation and a reference model that can be used in the global market. In addition, the two sides held broad discussions on the latest issues in the global AI industry, changes ahead in the AI computing market, and the direction of their cooperation.
The roundtable that followed was organized by MSIT during Su’s visit to Korea. It gave companies in Korea’s AI semiconductor and AI ecosystem an opportunity to meet directly with the senior leadership of AMD, a global AI computing company, discuss potential partnerships, and explore opportunities to enter global markets.
The roundtable was attended by 13 Korean companies*, representing all areas of AI infrastructure, including Korean AI semiconductors (neural processing units, or NPUs), software, memory and storage, networking, cloud, and AI models.
* FuriosaAI, HyperAccel, DEEPX, Mobilint, MangoBoost, Panmnesia, Dnotitia, Moreh, Nota AI, Lablup, FADU, Elice Group, and Upstage
The participating companies discussed specific ways to cooperate directly with Su, including linking AMD’s CPUs and GPUs with Korean AI semiconductors, joining open-source software ecosystems such as ROCm*, and exploring opportunities for Korean AI semiconductor companies to enter global markets. In particular, the participants presented ways to connect their technologies and services with AMD’s global AI ecosystem and shared various ideas for technological cooperation and global expansion.
* ROCm (Radeon Open Compute) is AMD’s open-source software platform for AI and high-performance computing, comparable to NVIDIA’s CUDA. It supports developing and running AI using GPUs.
Su emphasized that Korea is an important partner for AMD and said AMD would work with leading Korean companies to create new opportunities for cooperation as Korea strengthens its competitiveness in AI.
She also noted that AMD has expanded connections among different technologies and companies based on its open ecosystem. Building on this approach, AMD will actively work with Korean companies with strong technological capabilities and support their integration into the global AI ecosystem.
MSIT plans to closely review the cooperation proposals and requests from Korean companies raised at the roundtable and develop them into concrete cooperation projects in connection with follow-up measures under the MSIT–AMD MOU.
“The cooperation with AMD, which began with the MOU in July, has taken another step forward through Su’s visit this time and her direct meetings with Korean companies,” Ryu said. “Today’s meeting gave AMD and our companies an opportunity to share their respective technologies and capabilities and explore new possibilities for cooperation.”
“The government’s most important role is to create opportunities for good companies and technologies to connect and to support these connections so that they lead to actual cooperation,” he added. “I hope today’s meeting will mark the beginning of a new phase of cooperation in which AMD’s global capabilities and our companies’ technological strengths come together to create new AI technologies and businesses and take Korea’s AI semiconductor ecosystem to the next level.”
For further information, please contact the Public Relations Division (Phone: +82-44-202-4034, E-mail: msitmedia@korea.kr) of the Ministry of Science and ICT.
Please refer to the attached PDF.