Ministry of SMEs and Startups Partners with All Domestic Foundries to Foster Fabless Industry

The 6th 'Fabless-Foundry Win-Win Council' Meeting Held

On the 23rd, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced that it held the '6th Fabless-Foundry Win-Win Council' at the Pangyo Startup Zone, attended by the Korea Fabless Industry Association, domestic foundries including Samsung Electronics Foundry, and professors from the Seoul National University System Semiconductor Industry Promotion Center.

The Win-Win Council is a regular communication channel involving the fabless industry, foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing), and the Ministry of SMEs and Startups to secure the competitiveness of Korea's fabless (semiconductor design) industry and the overall system semiconductor sector. Established in 2022 to resolve difficulties faced by small and medium fabless companies and to concretize cooperation plans, it has reached its 6th session this year to expand the achievements of mutual cooperation.

At this Win-Win Council, discussions mainly focused on the presentation "System Semiconductor Industry Trends and Key Issues" by Professor Ki-Chang Choi of the Seoul National University System Semiconductor Industry Promotion Center, detailed plans for the '2024 Fabless Challenge,' and policy directions proposed by the Fabless Association for nurturing fabless startups. The Fabless Challenge is a program jointly conducted with domestic foundries to select promising fabless startups, providing support for MPW (multi-project wafer) prototyping costs and opportunities for new product manufacturing. So far, 10 companies have been selected.

Unlike previous challenges where only Samsung Electronics Foundry participated, the Fabless Industry Association proposed at the last Win-Win Council that all domestic foundries participate. DB HiTek and SK Hynix Foundry accepted this request, expanding the challenge to include all domestic foundries.

Promising fabless startups established within 10 years that wish to use the MPW process of the three domestic foundries are recruited, and five startups will be finally selected through document and presentation evaluations. The selected companies will have priority access to the foundries' MPW manufacturing process and can receive support for costs ranging from 100 million KRW to a maximum of 200 million KRW per company.

Cho Kyung-won, Director of Startup Policy, stated, "Although the semiconductor industry is facing increased difficulties due to the semiconductor hegemony competition between the U.S. and China, as well as the triple challenges of high inflation, high interest rates, and high exchange rates, the semiconductor-related economy is gradually recovering, as evidenced by increased semiconductor exports since the end of last year," adding, "The Ministry of SMEs and Startups will strive to strengthen the global competitiveness of fabless companies through initiatives such as the super-gap project and exchanges and cooperation with global large corporations, enabling small and medium fabless companies to grow further in this environment."