Samsung Electronics teamed with Naver to make its next-gen Mach-1 AI accelerator, but it seems that the two South Korean companies are experiencing “discord” according to reports.
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In a new report from Chosun, we’re learning that the executive officer of Naver Cloud, who is leading the Mach-1 AI accelerator project, from his own personal social media. Lee Dong-soo, CEO of Naver Cloud, said: “It was Naver who proposed to create Mach-1 first and planned its development, but now I don’t even see Naver’s name mentioned. I don’t know how to understand this”.
As for Mach-1, it’s a new AI semiconductor that doesn’t require HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) which is a big change to AMD and NVIDIA’s various AI accelerators and AI GPUs that use the ultra-fast HBM memory standard. Mach-1 is expected to both be cheaper and more energy efficient, which makes it perfect for AI startups that require AI hardware.
In late March, the relationship between Samsung and Naver began to fall apart, with Samsung announcing the development of its next-gen Mach-2 AI accelerator during a shareholder meeting. The issue here is that Naver’s name wasn’t mentioned, which makes it look like Samsung is leading the development of the next-generation Mach-2 accelerator.
Naver officials didn’t like this, especially after they had initially planned Mach-1, and provided the key ideas for the chip development, feeling like Samsung isn’t giving them much credit. On the other hand, Samsung officials say they’re working well together, but that social media post by Naver executive officer Lee Dong-soo says otherwise.