IBM Expands Strategic Partnership with Samsung to Include 7nm Chip Manufacturing

Agreement Expands 15-Year R&D Partnership to Define Leadership Roadmap for Semiconductor Industry

IBM announced an agreement with Samsung to manufacture 7-nanometer (nm) microprocessors for IBM Power Systems™, IBM Z™ and LinuxONE™, high-performance computing (HPC) systems, and cloud offerings.

The agreement combines Samsung’s industry-leading semiconductor manufacturing with IBM’s high-performance CPU designs. This combination is being designed to drive unmatched systems performance, including acceleration, memory and I/O bandwidth, encryption and compression speed, as well as system scaling. It positions IBM and Samsung as strategic partners leading the new era of high-performance computing specifically designed for AI.

“At IBM, our first priority is our clients,” said John Acocella, Vice President of Enterprise Systems and Technology Development for IBM Systems. “IBM selected Samsung to build our next generation of microprocessors because they share our level of commitment to the performance, reliability, security, and innovation that will position our clients for continued success on the next generation of IBM hardware.”

Today’s announcement also expands and extends the 15-year strategic process technology R&D partnership between the two companies which, as part of IBM’s Research Alliance, includes many industry firsts such as the first NanoSheet Device innovation for sub 5nm, the production of the industry’s first 7nm test chip and the first High-K Metal Gate foundry manufacturing. IBM’s Research Alliance ecosystem continues to define the leadership roadmap for the semiconductor industry.

“We are excited to expand our decade-long strategic relationship with IBM with our 7nm EUV process technology,” said Ryan Lee, Vice President of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “This collaboration is an important milestone for Samsung’s foundry business as it signifies confidence in Samsung’s cutting-edge high performance EUV process technology.”

Samsung is a member of the OpenPOWER Foundation, a vendor ecosystem facilitating the development of IBM Power architecture-based customized servers, networking and storage for future data centers and cloud computing. Samsung is also a member of the Q Network to help advance the understanding of applications software in quantum computing for the industry.

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