Choi Tae-won Meets with TSMC Chairman in Taiwan: "Let's Open the Foundation for the AI Era Together"

Met with Wei Zheja Chairman and Others in Taipei, Taiwan on the 6th
Strengthening the Triangular Alliance Following Nvidia's Jensen Huang in April

Chairman Chey Tae-won of SK Group (left) and Chairman Wei Zhejia of TSMC are taking a commemorative photo at the TSMC headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan on the 6th. Photo by SK Group

Choi Tae-won, Chairman of SK Group, met with Wei Zhejia, Chairman of TSMC, following his meeting with Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. As the demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) increases with the expansion of the artificial intelligence (AI) market, Chairman Choi is strengthening the "AI semiconductor alliance" by leveraging SK Hynix's HBM competitiveness.

On the 6th (local time), Chairman Choi met with key figures from Taiwan's IT industry, including TSMC Chairman Wei Zhejia, in Taipei, Taiwan, to discuss collaboration plans in AI and semiconductor fields. Accompanied by Kwak No-jung, President of SK Hynix, SK and TSMC agreed to further enhance cooperation to strengthen their AI semiconductor competitiveness.

Chairman Choi conveyed the message, "Let's open the foundation of an AI era that benefits humanity together," and they shared the intention to strengthen cooperation between SK Hynix and TSMC in the HBM sector. SK Hynix signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with TSMC in April to enhance its capabilities in developing HBM4 (6th generation HBM) and advanced packaging technologies.

Starting with HBM4, SK Hynix plans to utilize TSMC's advanced logic process for producing the Base Die to improve performance. Based on this collaboration, the company plans to mass-produce HBM4 from 2025. The Base Die refers to the die that connects to the GPU and controls the HBM. Additionally, both companies will optimize the combination of SK Hynix's HBM and TSMC's 'CoWoS (Chip on Wafer on Substrate)' technology and jointly respond to customer requests related to HBM. 'CoWoS' is a proprietary process patented by TSMC, which packages the logic chip, such as GPU/xPU, and HBM on a special substrate called an interposer.

Chairman Choi's "broad strides" for global cooperation in AI and semiconductor fields have continued since the end of last year. This is because the importance of building a global cooperative ecosystem that can satisfy the wide-ranging demands of customers in AI and semiconductor sectors is growing. In December last year, Chairman Choi visited the headquarters of Dutch semiconductor equipment company ASML, and in April, he met Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, at the company's headquarters in San Jose, USA, to discuss ways to strengthen the partnership between the two companies. An SK Group official stated, "Chairman Choi's recent activities are based on the judgment that establishing a global cooperation network is crucial to enhance the competitiveness of Korea's AI semiconductor industry and SK's business."