Samsung Electronics today opened the Samsung AI Forum, at which it shared the latest research achievements in artificial intelligence (AI) and computer engineering (CE), contributing to enhancing the company’s next-generation semiconductor technology.

With over 1,000 attendees — including leading academics, industry experts, researchers and students — day 1 of the seventh iteration of the Samsung AI Forum took place at the Suwon Convention Center in Gyeonggi-do, Korea, under the theme of “large-scale AI for a better tomorrow.” A two-day forum, the first day was hosted by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), and day 2 will be hosted on November 8 by Samsung Research at the Samsung R&D campus in Seoul, Korea.

Kye Hyun Kyung, President and CEO of Samsung Electronics’ Device Solutions (DS) Division, said in his opening remarks, “The spotlight has recently shifted toward Generative AI technology, as it provides us the potential to unlock new solutions and address long-standing challenges. But the need for in-depth research on the safety, trustworthiness and sustainability of AI is increasing at the same time.” About the event, Kyung added, “We expect this forum — where top global experts have gathered — will be a platform to discuss ways to create a brighter future through AI and semiconductor technologies.”

Safe Direction for AI Research Suggested; Future of LLM-Based Semiconductors Shared

▲ SAIF 2023 keynote speakers: (from left) Yoshua Bengio, professor at University of Montreal, Kye Hyun Kyung President and CEO of Samsung Electronics, Jim Keller, CEO of Tenstorrent

Yoshua Bengio, expert in deep learning technology and professor at the University of Montreal, shared his latest research in a keynote presentation titled, “Towards a Safe AI Scientist System.” He introduced a safe AI machine learning algorithm that can prevent large language models (LLMs) from developing in directions not intended by developers.

Jim Keller, CEO of AI semiconductor startup Tenstorrent, introduced the open instruction set architecture (ISA) RISC-V during his session titled, “Own Your Silicon,” and emphasized that RISC-V will create new possibilities in next-generation AI through innovation in hardware structure design.

Overall, day 1 of Samsung AI Forum 2023 addressed two key topics: LLMs and the Transformation of AI for Industry, and Large-scale Computing for LLMs and Simulation. The topics covered AI and CE, respectively.

With SAIT serving as the company’s R&D hub and incubator for cutting-edge technologies, SAIT researchers shared their visions on how the future of semiconductor development and manufacturing will change by integrating AI into all areas of semiconductors, and explored the possibilities of future computing in semiconductor processing, including large simulation accelerated by machine learning.

Accolades Presented to Exceptional Researchers and Students

During the forum, Samsung also hosted a ceremony to announce the winners of the Samsung AI Researcher Award and the Samsung AI/CE Challenge. The intent of these accolades is to honor up-and-coming researchers, university students and graduates who are excelling domestically.

Samsung AI Researcher of the Year awards were presented to five AI researchers: Professor Connor Coley at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Professor Jason Lee at Princeton University, Professor Emma Pierson at Cornell University, Professor Xiang Ren at University of Southern California, Professor Virginia Smith at Carnegie Mellon University.

Among the honorees Professor Lee is focusing on theoretical and applied research including deep learning, reinforcement learning and optimization. In particular, his work was highly praised for its contribution to the development of AI research around the world through the publication of several outstanding papers on optimization.

The honor of winning the Samsung AI/CE Challenge, with submissions from 1,481 students comprising 410 teams, went to 16 teams.

Ph.D. student Keondo Park from the Seoul National University Graduate School of Data Science, a member of the grand-prize winning team, said, “In the course of implementing our AI project directly, we were able to explore deeply about possible problems. The AI/CE challenge was a good opportunity to broaden our horizons on research.”

Furthermore, SAIT presented a poster of leading research papers as well as exhibitions of research projects in AI and CE. It also prepared networking programs for attendees to engage in the vital AI and CE ecosystems.

The official video for Samsung AI Forum 2023 will be available on the Samsung Electronics YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/@Samsung) from November 16th.

Samsung AI Forum 2023, which is being hosted by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), will also focus on and highlight the direction of future research, with the presence of world-renowned AI scholars and industry experts. This seventh iteration of the Samsung AI Forum will be an in-person event, held under the theme of “large-scale AI for a better tomorrow.”

Kye Hyun Kyung, President and CEO of Samsung Electronics Device Solutions Division, will begin the forum with opening remarks, followed by keynotes from Yoshua Bengio, professor at the University of Montreal, and Jim Keller, CEO of AI semiconductor startup Tenstorrent.

Professor Satoshi Matsuoka of the Riken Institute of Computer Science in Japan, and Larry Zitnick, a research scientist from the Meta AI Research Lab will also be giving invited talks. In addition to these notable speakers, SAIT’s AI and CE research leaders — as well as leading academics from around the world — will share the status and vision of their research.

Samsung AI Forum 2023 will address two key topics: Large Language Models and Transformation of AI for Industry, and Large-scale Computing for Large Language Model and Simulation, which cover AI and CE, respectively.

During the forum, Samsung will also host a ceremony to announce the winners of the Samsung AI Researcher Award and the Samsung AI/CE Challenge. These accolades are intended to honor up-and-coming researchers, university students and graduates who are excelling domestically.

Furthermore, the forum will seek to vitalize the AI and CE research ecosystem by presenting posters of leading research papers and preparing networking programs for attendees.

“We believe AI- and CE-enhanced next generation semiconductor technology will play a pivotal role in improving the quality of life and SAIT has been working closely with academics and experts to seek Samsung’s new long-term growth drivers. We hope Samsung AI Forum will accelerate the expansion of the AI and CE research ecosystem around the world,” said Gyoyoung Jin, President of SAIT and Co-Chair of the Samsung AI Forum.

Registration will be available from October 12 on the Samsung AI Forum website, which allows attendees to pre-submit questions to the forum’s speakers.

▲ (left to right) SAIT Researchers Dong Sik Yang, Hyun Chul Lee, Hyuk Jae Kwon and Min Seok Koo

“This project started from listening to suggestions from manufacturers and users of air purification filters,” said Hyuk Jae Kwon, one of the lead-/corresponding authors at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT). “We plan to expand the research into accelerating the commercialization of long-lifetime filters in the future.”

▲ Filter Structure

Conventional air purification filters need frequent replacement because of their short cycle of six months to one year. In addition, every single filter can only remove either PM or VOCs, respectively, limiting air purifiers’ space efficiency.

To address these problems, researchers at SAIT developed and implemented an unprecedented filter technology that applies photocatalysts such as copper oxide (Cu₂O) and titanium dioxide (TiO₂) for the first time and verifies the viability for commercialization.

Samsung’s ceramic catalyst filter technology is expected to help implement compact air purification systems, significantly reducing both disposable waste and the cost burden caused by frequent filter replacement.

The filter is designed to capture PMs first in the porous ceramic wall at the inlet channel, where the inorganic membrane is coated and decomposes VOC gases on the photocatalyst on the outlet channel under a single-pass airflow. It combines two different filters for dust and gas and increases dust loading capacity by four times compared to conventional filters, from five grams per liter to 20.

In addition, since the SAIT-developed Cu₂O/TiO₂ photocatalyst is insoluble, the filter is regenerable by simple water-washing and still retains its initial PM and VOC gas removal performance. Assuming ten times of regeneration through water-washing, the filter can be used for 20 years, lasting up to 40 times longer lifespan than the conventional HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filter.

For further assessment, Samsung Electronics plans to produce prototypes for air conditioning facilities at office buildings, bus terminals and underground parking lots in its semiconductor campuses.

With increasing popularity in research studies about future AI technology, there is an even higher expectation that AI will bring more value to our daily lives. On November 8 and 9, Samsung Electronics hosted the Samsung AI Forum 2022 to share the progress of AI research and explore more ways for the industry to advance. World-renowned scholars and experts who attended this year’s forum focused on hyperscale AI, an AI model that can evolve to the human level of thinking by processing massive amounts of data.

Samsung Newsroom met with Vice President Joohyung Lee at Samsung Research’s¹ Global AI Center to hear more about the main topics discussed during the second day of the forum, which Samsung Research hosted. Learn more about upcoming technology trends and the future vision of AI research introduced by Samsung Research in the infographic below.

​¹ Samsung Research, acting as Samsung Electronics’ advanced R&D hub, leads the development of future technologies for the company’s Device eXperience (DX) Division.

Now in its sixth year, Samsung AI Forum will be held from November 8 to 9 (KST). This is the first time in three years that the event will be held in person. With over 1,200 attendees expected to join, this global forum provides a packed program hosted by Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT)¹ on November 8 and Samsung Research² on November 9.

The event will also be livestreamed on Samsung Electronics’ YouTube channel.

Day One: Shaping the Future with AI and Semiconductors

Under the theme of “Shaping the Future with AI and Semiconductor,” AI experts gathered to discuss the future direction of AI research that will create new milestones in AI-based semiconductor and material innovation.

The day started with opening remarks by Jong-Hee (JH) Han, Vice Chairman, CEO and Head of Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics. “I expect that AI technology will provide better convenience and new experiences for all while it also lays the foundation for other key innovations to various fields and applications, including next-generation semiconductors,” said Han.

Professor Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal, Canada, shared his latest research in a keynote presentation, “Why We Need Amortized, Causal and Bayesian World Models.” He emphasized the use of amortized inference and the Bayesian approach in causal models for AI that explores theories and design experiments in the field of science and general AI.

Afterward, technology sessions, such as “AI for R&D Innovation,” “Recent Advances of AI Algorithms” and “Large Scale Computing for AI and HPC” were delivered.

In the “AI for R&D Innovation” session, research leaders at SAIT, including the Executive Vice President and Head of SAIT’s AI Research Center, Changkyu Choi, shared the status and vision of Samsung’s research on AI. Specifically, they discussed how AI technology will be influential in fields including semiconductors and material development.

In a session named “Recent Advances of AI Algorithms,” Minjoon Seo, a professor at KAIST, and Hyunoh Song, a professor at Seoul National University, delivered presentations on the latest research achievements on AI algorithms, including large language model-based interface for ultra-accurate semantic search.

Lastly, in a session called “Large Scale Computing for AI and HPC,” leading researchers on supercomputers, including the former IBM and Intel Fellow, Alan Gara, discussed the role of AI in the future of high-performance computing. They also introduced an insightful case on processing-in-memory, an innovative technology that is enabled by the development of next-generation supercomputers.

Samsung AI Researcher of the Year awards, which were established to discover excelling rising researchers in the field of AI, were also presented during the forum. Samsung AI Researcher of the Year was awarded to five AI researchers, including Professor Mohit Iyyer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

In addition, various programs, including poster presentations of excellent research papers, an introduction of SAIT, an exhibition of its research projects and networking event for researchers and students in the field of AI, were held to accelerate active research in AI.

Day Two: Scaling AI for the Real World

Under the theme of “Scaling AI for the Real World,” Day 2 of the forum hosted by Samsung Research will be a venue for sharing the development direction of future AI technologies that will significantly affect our lives, including hyperscale AI, digital human, robotics, etc., that have become hot topics.

Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research, will give a keynote on the “first steps of an effort to improve upon classical brain theories by optimizing biologically plausible unsupervised learning algorithms” together with a welcoming remark.

Following a presentation on the “Current Status of AI Research by Samsung Research” given by Daniel D. Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Global AI Center at Samsung Research, AI experts, including the heads of global research centers who have recently conducted active research will be invited to the stage as speakers.

Professor Terrence Sejnowski at the University of California San Diego, U.S., who found NeurIPS, the world’s most prestigious AI conference, will discuss the intelligence of hyperscale language models based on experimental cases testing whether hyperscale language models have intelligence.

This will be followed by an introduction of the next-generation AI research direction for ensuring the responsible and fair use of hyperscale AI in the products and services of businesses presented by Dr. Johannes Gehrke, Head of Microsoft Research Lab.

Next, Professor Dieter Fox at the University of Washington, U.S., who is also the Senior Director of Robotics Research at NVIDIA, will explain how a robot can directly operate unlearned objects only based on visual data without creating 3D models. He will also discuss how to use natural language commands to effectively instruct a robot to carry out various operations.

Lastly, Seungwon Hwang, a professor at Seoul National University, will discuss ways to use causality, evidentiality, and other forms of knowledge to further strengthen hyperscale language models.

There will be two live panel discussions moderated by EVP Daniel Lee, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, in which panelists will discuss various topics. There will also be Lightning Talk sessions in which researchers at the Global AI Center will give presentations on the details of their current research.

In the Lightning Talks session, Vice President Joohyung Lee at Global AI Center will discuss ways to use hyperscale AI models to combine the external appearance of a digital human with internal intelligence. SangHa Kim will also explain a machine translation technology that allows users to use various Samsung products with no language barrier.

In addition, participants will have opportunities to look at several demos and research posters produced by Global AI Center at the booth, where they can personally interact with the researchers.

Furthermore, on the forum’s website, speakers and participants can freely communicate in Korean and English on the Q&A Bulletin Board, where Samsung Research’s translation service “SR Translate” is applied.

¹ Samsung’s R&D hub dedicated to cutting-edge future technologies.
² Samsung Research, acting as Samsung Electronics’ advanced R&D hub, leads the development of future technologies for the company’s Device eXperience (DX) Division.

The Samsung AI Forum, now in its sixth year, is a place for exchanging technological advances with world-renowned AI scholars and experts, sharing the latest AI research achievements and exploring future research direction.

This year’s forum will be held in-person for the first time in three years and will also be live-streamed on Samsung Electronics’ YouTube channel.

Those who are interested in the event can register to participate in the forum from October 18 to the day of the event on the Samsung AI Forum website. Registered participants will be able to receive a detailed program agenda and submit questions online.

Day One: Shaping the Future With AI and Semiconductor

Day one will be hosted by Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) under the theme “Shaping the Future with AI and Semiconductor.” Participants will discuss the current status and research direction on AI that will lead the future of innovations in other fields including semiconductors and materials.

Jong-Hee (JH) Han, Vice Chairman, CEO and Head of Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics, will start the forum by giving the opening remarks, followed by a keynote speech from Professor Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal, Canada. Afterward, technology sessions, such as “AI for R&D Innovation,” “Recent Advances of AI Algorithms” and “Large Scale Computing for AI and HPC” will be held.

During each technology session, renowned AI experts and the AI research leaders at SAIT will be on stage to share their findings. Minjoon Seo, Professor at KAIST, and Hyunoh Song, Professor at the Seoul National University, will introduce the latest research achievements on AI algorithms, and the former IBM and Intel Fellow Alan Gara, who is one of the leading researchers on supercomputers, will make a presentation on the evolution of computing and the future of AI. AI research leaders at SAIT including Changkyu Choi, Executive Vice President and Head of SAIT’s AI Research Center, will share the status and vision of Samsung’s research on AI.

“This year’s AI forum will be prepared to be a place to discuss the direction of AI research to create a better future by applying AI technology to various fields, especially semiconductor, in the future.” said Gyo-Young Jin, President and the Head of SAIT as well as Co-chair of the Samsung AI Forum.

The Samsung AI Researcher of the Year awards, which were established to discover excelling rising researchers in the field of AI, will also be presented during the forum. In addition, various programs, including poster presentations of excellent research papers, introduction of the SAIT, exhibition of its research projects and networking event for researchers and students in the field of AI will be held to accelerate active research in AI.

Day Two: Scaling AI for the Real World

Day two of the forum will be hosted by Samsung Research under the theme “Scaling AI for the Real World.” Participants will share the direction of future AI technological advancement that will have an important impact on our lives, such as hyperscale AI, digital human and robotics technology, which are the latest trending topics.

Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research, will start with a welcoming remark and a keynote speech on “Evolutionary approach to brain-inspired learning algorithms.”

Daniel Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Samsung Research’s Global AI Center, will give a presentation on current status of Samsung Research’s AI research, which will be followed by invited talks by AI experts, including the heads of Global Research Institutes.

Terrence Sejnowski, Professor at the University of California — San Diego and founder of NeurIPS (The Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems), one of the most prestigious international conferences on AI, will speak on whether large language models have intelligent, and Dr. Johannes Gehrke, Head of Microsoft Research Lab, will explain the core technology of hyperscale AI and research directions of Microsoft’s next-generation AI.

Afterwards, Dieter Fox, Senior Director of Robotics Research at NVIDIA, will give a presentation on robot technology that controls objects without an explicit model and Seungwon Hwang, Professor at the Seoul National University, will share knowledge on robust natural language processing technology.

Furthermore, Daniel Lee will moderate the panel discussion on the latest AI trends and the future outlook with fellow speakers. There will also be times allotted for presentation and demonstration of the latest research status by the researchers at Samsung Research’s AI Research Center.

“This year’s Samsung AI Forum will be a place for participants to better understand various AI researches currently underway in terms of ‘Scaling AI for the Real World’ to increase the value of our lives,” said Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research. “We hope many people, who are interested in the field of AI, will participate in this year’s forum, which will be held both online and in person.”

Samsung Electronics today announced its new environmental strategy, a comprehensive effort to join global efforts to tackle climate change. It includes commitments to achieve enterprise-wide net zero carbon emissions and plans to use more renewable energy, as well as to invest in and research new technologies to develop energy-efficient products, increase water reuse and develop carbon capture technology.

At the heart of the new commitment is achieving net zero carbon emissions (Scope 1 & Scope 2) for all operations in the Device eXperience (DX) Division by 2030, and across all global operations, including the Device Solutions (DS) Division, by 2050. The DX Division encompasses the company’s consumer electronics businesses, including Mobile eXperience, Visual Display, Digital Appliances, Networks and Health & Medical Equipment, while the DS Division includes the Memory, System LSI and Foundry businesses.

Samsung Electronics has also joined RE100, a global initiative dedicated to pursuing 100 percent renewable energy. As part of this commitment, the company plans to match electric power needs of all international markets where it operates, outside of Korea, with renewable energy within five years.

The new plan builds on Samsung Electronics’ existing climate efforts, significantly expanding the scope of its programs and investments. Samsung will develop new technologies and implement further sustainable practices to enable a brighter future for all.

“The climate crisis is one of the greatest challenges of our time. The consequences of inaction are unimaginable and require the contribution of every one of us, including businesses and governments,” said Jong-Hee Han, Vice Chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics. “Samsung is responding to the threats of climate change with a comprehensive plan that includes reducing emissions, new sustainability practices and the development of innovative technologies and products that are better for our planet.”

Samsung Electronics’ environmental commitment also encompasses an enterprise-wide effort to enhance resource circularity throughout the entire product lifecycle, from raw material sourcing to recycling and disposal. The plan also details investments in new technologies to reduce emissions from process gases as well as to reduce power consumption in consumer products. The company also plans to explore carbon capture and utilization technologies and tackle harmful airborne particulate matter.

In recognition of the need for innovative approaches around environmental sustainability, Samsung Electronics will invest over KRW 7 trillion in its environmental initiatives by 2030, including reducing process gases, conserving water, expanding electronic waste collection and reducing pollutants. The investment figure excludes costs related to expansion of renewable energy use.

Net Zero Direct and Indirect Carbon Emissions by 2050

Samsung Electronics plans to achieve net zero direct and indirect carbon emissions by 2050, with the DX Division achieving its goal by 2030. By reaching net zero direct and indirect carbon emissions, Samsung Electronics expects to reduce the equivalent of about 17 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e) emissions based on 2021 figures.

To propel these efforts, Samsung Electronics will invest heavily in innovative technologies for treatment facilities that reduce carbon emissions. The company plans to develop new technologies to significantly reduce process gases — a byproduct of semiconductor manufacturing — and install treatment facilities on its semiconductor manufacturing lines by 2030. Samsung Electronics will continue to expand waste heat utilization facilities and consider introducing electric heat sources to reduce LNG boiler usage.

Samsung Electronics has joined RE100, in a collaborative effort to reduce indirect carbon emissions from power consumption, and aims to match electric power needs with renewable energy by 2050 for all operations globally. As part of this initiative, Samsung Electronics plans to run all operations outside of Korea as well as the DX Division on renewable energy within five years. The company’s renewable energy sourcing methods will include, but not limited to, signing power purchase agreements (PPA), purchasing renewable energy certificates and participating in green pricing programs.

The goal for matching electricity use with renewable energy is 2022 for Southwest Asia and Vietnam; 2025 for Central and Latin America; and 2027 for Southeast Asia, CIS and Africa. In the U.S., China and Europe, which have already matched electric power use with renewable energy, Samsung Electronics plans to move towards expanding renewable energy power purchase agreements (PPA).

RE100 cites Korea, where many of Samsung Electronics’ production facilities are based, as one of the most challenging countries to source renewable energy. This is in part due to the country’s renewable energy market, where procurement options for corporations have begun to expand but remain limited. Additionally, the electric power needs of semiconductor manufacturing facilities have continued to increase with the expansion of Samsung Electronics’ production capacity to meet global demand. However, the company will aim to achieve renewable energy use more proactively, acknowledging the urgency of today’s climate challenges. The company will also strengthen cooperation with different stakeholders, including peers in the technology industry, international organizations and NGOs.

Ultra-Low Power Products and Resource Circularity

Part of Samsung Electronics’ pledge for a healthier planet includes ensuring its products are energy-efficient and use less electricity, while also ensuring that the entire product lifecycle is more sustainable, from raw material sourcing to disposal and recycling.

Ultra-Low Power Semiconductors and Energy-Efficient Electronics Products

Samsung Electronics plans to tap new low-power technologies to reduce energy consumption in every day consumer electronics. This includes development of new ultra-low power memory chips that aim to significantly reduce the annual power consumption of memory products used in data centers and mobile devices by 2025 compared to current products.

The company will also implement low-power technologies in major models of seven consumer electronics products — smartphones, refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, TVs, monitors and PCs — with the goal of lowering power consumption levels by an average of 30 percent in 2030 compared to products with the same specifications in 2019.

Going forward, Samsung Electronics will set mid-to long-term reduction targets for value chain emissions (Scope 3). Samsung Electronics will also focus on new approaches to reduce emissions in areas such as supply chains, logistics and resource circularity, as well as supporting suppliers in setting their emissions targets and reduction efforts.

Maximizing Resource Circularity Across the Entire Product Lifecycle

Samsung Electronics will double down on efforts to improve the resource circularity of electronics over the entire lifecycle of a product, from raw material sourcing to disposal and recycling, ensuring that every resource is used with as little impact on the environment as possible.

This all starts with reassessing the use of natural resources in product development. Samsung Electronics has created a new Circular Economy Lab to conduct comprehensive research on material recycling technologies and resource extraction processes from waste with the aim of applying these technologies to maximize resource circularity. In addition, Samsung Electronics plans to establish a system by 2030 in which minerals extracted from all collected waste batteries can be reused.

Also by 2030, the company aims to have 50 percent of the plastic used in its products incorporate recycled resin. The year 2050 will see this figure increase to 100 percent. The Galaxy Z Fold4 has already been designed to incorporate plastics recycled from discarded fishing nets and the success seen here will soon be expanded to additional products.

To address sustainability after product use, Samsung Electronics plans to expand the scope of its electronic waste collection system from approximately 50 countries to about 180 countries by 2030. Through this, the company plans to collect a cumulative 10 million tons of electronic waste between 2009 and 2030, the highest target in the industry and a cumulative 25 million tons by 2050. Samsung Electronics will also actively promote an upcycling program that collects used smartphones and reuses them for other purposes such as IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

Water Conservation and Pollutant Treatment Measures

Samsung Electronics also plans to maximize water resource efficiency. As domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity expands, the daily water withdrawal needs from Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor operations in Korea are projected to double from current levels by 2030. However, the company is committing to maximizing water reuse, therefore keeping actual water withdrawals to 2021 levels.

For the DX Division, the company plans to promote water reuse by improving its water treatment facilities and to restore the same amount of water as it consumes by 2030 through water restoration projects such as water quality improvement and stream restoration.

Simultaneously, the DS Division aims to apply new technologies that remove air and water pollutants emitted during the semiconductor manufacturing process and treat them before being discharged to ensure that they have almost no additional impact on the environment from 2040.

Company-wide, Samsung Electronics plans to obtain a platinum-level Zero Waste to Landfill Certification issued by global safety certification organization Underwriters Laboratories (UL) for all global operations by 2025.

Invest in and Develop Innovative Technologies for a Sustainable Future

Samsung Electronics intends to apply the company’s leading technology in addressing global climate challenges. In particular, the company will focus on developing carbon capture and utilization technologies to reduce carbon emissions and clean air technologies to reduce particulate matter, which has become a pressing global environmental challenge.

The Carbon Capture Research Institute was established within the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) in September 2021, the first of its kind in the semiconductor industry. The key mission of the Institute is to develop and commercialize carbon capture and utilization technologies that make it possible to store carbon discharged from semiconductor industrial sites and turn it into a usable resource. The technologies developed by the Institute will first be applied to semiconductor production lines after 2030 and then to other parts of the company as well as its suppliers.

The company will also develop clean air technologies, including new filtration systems, to reduce particulate matter and plans to expand usage to local communities from 2030.

Additionally, Samsung Electronics plans to identify and invest in startups that support innovative green technologies. The company is also committed to fostering ideas and supporting projects that tackle climate change through its C-Lab, the in-house venture incubation and external start-up acceleration program.

Accountability and Tracking Progress

To ensure accountability, Samsung Electronics will have its efforts objectively verified by designated organizations. Its performance will be assessed via participation in the Samsung Institute of EHS Strategy’s certification system and verified by a Carbon Reduction Verification Committee that includes third-party experts.

The company has developed implementation roadmaps for each environmental goal, including the net zero and circular economy targets, and will track progress and ensure robust implementation through the Sustainability Council, chaired by the CEO, and the Sustainability Committee, consisting of outside directors.

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), the research and development arm of Samsung Electronics, began working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on the reinvented toilet in 2019, and recently finished the development of core technologies for the toilet and successfully developed and tested a prototype.

Today’s event announcing the completion of the reinvented toilet project at SAIT in Suwon, Korea, was attended by Gyoyoung Jin, President and Head of SAIT; Doulaye Kone, Deputy Director, Water, Sanitation & Hygiene and Sun Kim, Senior Program Officer, Water, Sanitation & Hygiene at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and Yong Chae Lee, External Advisor to the Foundation, along with the project’s participants from SAIT.

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee met with Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on Aug. 16 to discuss the outcome of the reinvented toilet project and exchanged ideas regarding global social contribution initiatives. During the meeting, Bill Gates shared the philanthropic vision and ongoing initiatives of the Foundation and Vice Chairman Lee expressed his commitment to using Samsung’s technologies to help address the challenges facing humanity.

Samsung plans to offer royalty-free licenses of patents related to the project to developing countries during the commercialization stage. Samsung will also continue to provide close consultation to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help bring the technologies to mass production. The two organizations will work together to identify industry partners willing to commercialize the technology, after making the design more efficient for mass production.

During three years of research and development, SAIT worked on the basic design and developed the component and modular technology, leading to the successful development of a prototype for household use. The product is energy-efficient with effluent treatment capability, and meets the performance required by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for commercialization for a household-use reinvented toilet.

The core technologies developed by Samsung include heat-treatment and bioprocessing technologies to kill pathogens from human waste and make the released effluent and solids safe for the environment. The system enables the treated water to be fully recycled. Solid waste is dehydrated, dried and combusted into ashes, while liquid waste is treated through a biological purification process.

Launched in 2011, the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s initiative to develop transformative toilet technologies that can safely and effectively manage human waste (link).

According to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, about 3.6 billion people are forced to use unsafe sanitation facilities, resulting in half a million children under age 5 dying every year from diarrheal diseases caused by limited access to safe water and hygiene.

The research was led by Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) in close collaboration with Samsung Electronics Foundry Business and Semiconductor R&D Center. The first author of the paper, Dr. Seungchul Jung, Staff Researcher at SAIT, and the co-corresponding authors Dr. Donhee Ham, Fellow of SAIT and Professor of Harvard University and Dr. Sang Joon Kim, Vice President of Technology at SAIT, spearheaded the research.

In the standard computer architecture, data is stored in memory chips and data computing is executed in separate processor chips.

In contrast, in-memory computing is a new computing paradigm that seeks to perform both data storage and data computing in a memory network. Since this scheme can process a large amount of data stored within the memory network itself without having to move the data, and also because the data processing in the memory network is executed in a highly parallel manner, power consumption is substantially reduced. In-memory computing has thus emerged as one of the promising technologies to realize next-generation low-power AI semiconductor chips.

For this reason, research on in-memory computing has been intensely pursued worldwide. Non-volatile memories, in particular RRAM (Resistive Random Access Memory) and PRAM (Phase-change Random Access Memory), have been actively used for demonstrating in-memory computing. By contrast, it has so far been difficult to use MRAM ─ another type of non-volatile memory ─ for in-memory computing despite MRAM’s merits such as operation speed, endurance and large-scale production. This difficulty stems from the low resistance of MRAM, due to which MRAM cannot enjoy the power reduction advantage when used in the standard in-memory computing architecture.

(From left) Dr. Donhee Ham, Fellow of SAIT and Professor of Harvard University, Dr. Seungchul Jung, Staff Researcher at SAIT and Dr. Sang Joon Kim, Vice President of Technology at SAIT

The Samsung Electronics researchers have provided a solution to this issue by an architectural innovation. Concretely, they succeeded in developing an MRAM array chip that demonstrates in-memory computing, by replacing the standard, ‘current-sum’ in-memory computing architecture with a new, ‘resistance sum’ in-memory computing architecture, which addresses the problem of small resistances of individual MRAM devices.

Samsung’s research team subsequently tested the performance of this MRAM in-memory computing chip by running it to perform AI computing. The chip achieved an accuracy of 98% in classification of hand-written digits and a 93% accuracy in detecting faces from scenes.

By ushering MRAM ─ the memory which has already reached commercial-scale production embedded in the system semiconductor fabrication ─ into the realm of in-memory computing, this work expands the frontier of the next-generation low-power AI chip technologies.

The researchers have also suggested that not only can this new MRAM chip be used for in-memory computing, but it also can serve as a platform to download biological neuronal networks. This is along the line of the neuromorphic electronics vision that Samsung’s researchers recently put forward in a perspective paper published in the September 2021 issue of the journal Nature Electronics.

“In-memory computing draws similarity to the brain in the sense that in the brain, computing also occurs within the network of biological memories, or synapses, the points where neurons touch one another,” said Dr. Seungchul Jung, the first author of the paper. “In fact, while the computing performed by our MRAM network for now has a different purpose from the computing performed by the brain, such solid-state memory network may in the future be used as a platform to mimic the brain by modeling the brain’s synapse connectivity.”

As highlighted in this work, by building on its leading memory technology and merging it with system semiconductor technology, Samsung plans to continue to expand its leadership in next-generation computing and AI semiconductors.

Speakers representing various fields introduced newly developed AI algorithms, as well as innovative AI solutions that can benefit our lives in the future. Samsung Electronics livestreamed this year’s forum on its YouTube channel and offered participants – which included engineers, researchers and students in the field of AI – the opportunity to interact with experts during a Q&A session.

Read on for Samsung Newsroom’s recap of the presentations and key topics that took center stage during the two-day event.

Samsung AI Forum Day One

Developing AI That Addresses Common Problems

Hosted by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Samsung’s R&D hub dedicated to cutting-edge future technologies, day one of the Samsung AI Forum began with opening remarks from Dr. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics. “Digital transformation has been accelerated in every industry, to which data science and machine learning are essential,” said Dr. Kim. “We at Samsung are open to discussing how to tackle important, common problems with researchers from all over the world, and we hope that the Samsung AI Forum can help facilitate that goal.”

This was followed by a keynote speech from Professor Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal, the co-chair of the Samsung AI Forum and a Samsung AI Professor. During his speech, Professor Bengio introduced a new machine learning tool called GFlowNets.

After explaining how the algorithms could be applied to the development of new drugs, he emphasized how “We find that [the model] converges to good solutions faster than other methods, and in addition, it finds a more diverse set of solutions. So this is very encouraging, and we are very excited about the potential applications in discovery in general.” After finishing his speech, the professor discussed ways to apply the algorithms during a Q&A session that featured scientists from around the world.

The keynote was followed by three technology sessions entitled “Scalable & Sustainable AI Computing”, “AI for Scientific Discovery” and “Trustworthy Computer Vision”. During these sessions, leading academics and startups spoke alongside some of Samsung’s top researchers.

Professors Kunle Olukotun of Stanford University, Gerbrand Ceder of the University of California – Berkeley and Antonio Torralba of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shared key findings in their respective areas of AI research. Founders of startups based in Silicon Valley, including Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras Systems, Bryce Meredig, CSO of Citrine Informatics and Daniel Bibireata, Vice President of Landing AI, presented insights on business models for various areas of AI research, as well as future business strategies. Representing Samsung were multiple leading researchers, including Changkyu Choi, Senior Vice President and Head of SAIT’s AI & SW Research Center, who introduced the company’s vision for AI and summarized the progress it has made through its research in the field.

The event also showcased rising talents and researchers in the field of AI. Samsung revealed this year’s five winners of the Samsung AI Researcher of the Year award, which was launched last year to recognize promising global AI researchers.

“I’m especially thankful to my students, whose work is really what’s being rewarded here,” said Professor Phillip Isola of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who received the award. “We’re trying to make progress to make AI systems that are closer to [reaching] human-like [and] animal-like abilities,” he added, describing natural intelligence.

“My research lies at the intersection of computer vision and machine learning, and my overall goal is to create vision systems that are reliable and accessible for everyone,” added Professor Judy Hoffman of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

For the Coexistence of Humans and AI

Day one of the forum closed with a panel discussion in which academics engaged in lively conversations and shared their insights. The panel’s moderator, Youngsang Choi, Vice President of SAIT, introduced topics related to each panelist’s area of expertise. After the discussion, participants were given free rein to ask the panelists questions.

One participant asked the panelists if they believed that it would be possible for AI algorithms to achieve human-level data efficiency in training, to which Professor Antonio Torralba said yes.

“When we think about the data that humans have, it’s not just visual data. They really sense the world through a lot of different mechanisms,” Professor Torralba explained. “Also, humans actually are not passive observers of the world. They are actually interacting with the world and performing all kinds of experiments. I think, in order to achieve [a human-like] level of efficiency, we need to incorporate all of these things and make them really like the main characters of the movie that AI is playing now.”

The panel discussion also offered an opportunity for students majoring in AI-related fields to share their concerns with the experts and receive advice. In the field of AI natural language processing (NLP), for example, the number of parameters is continuously increasing, which means that the costs required to train a model are too. Considering these circumstances, participants discussed which way academic research should be heading.

Professor Bengio concluded the panel discussion by offering some insightful advice to young AI researchers and students. “Don’t be afraid to go in directions that are very different from what has been established as state of the art,” said the professor. “Brain power is the thing that’s really behind innovation and [the] amazing progress that science brings us. So don’t be afraid to try things [and] don’t be afraid to question what has been apparently established for years or decades. That’s how we are all going to make progress.”

Samsung AI Forum Day Two

The Latest AI Research, All in One Place

Day two of the forum was hosted by Samsung Research, Samsung Electronics’ advanced R&D hub, which leads the development of future technologies for its Consumer Electronics and IT & Mobile Communications divisions. Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research, emphasized that “AI is a technology that makes people’s lives better,” and offered an overview of the various AI-related projects that Samsung Research was engaged in, including those related to smartphone cameras, on-device AI, Open Source AI System Software, Machine Translation, and AI technologies for robots. “I’m really looking forward to today’s lectures by leading researchers in AI,” said Dr. Seung, heightening viewers’ expectations.

The day began with a keynote from Professor Leslie Valiant of Harvard University, who offered details on how to augment supervised learning with reasoning. “To make AI work, it takes several components,” Professor Valiant explained. “The first component is identifying which phenomenon or functionality you want to realize.”

Next came lectures delivered by academics who have been actively leading AI research. These include Professor Felix Heide of Princeton University, Research Scientist Been Kim of Google Brain and Professor Max Welling, a research chair in machine learning at the University of Amsterdam and a Distinguished Scientist at Microsoft Research.

AI’s Evolution Into a Tool for Gaining Insights

Day two’s panel discussion saw experts share their opinions on how AI technology will impact people’s lives in the future. The panel’s moderator, Dr. Daniel D. Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Samsung Research’s Global AI Center, kicked off the discussion with a question.

“The first time AI came into presence, there was a lot of emphasis at that time on logical reasoning,” Dr. Lee explained. “But now, data-driven approaches such as deep neural networks are rising. And what we just heard from Leslie’s talk was [about] how we can actually use the logic [now] in combination with these more advanced neural network techniques. What would be the big advantage of doing that kind of return, in some sense, to logic with neural networks?”

“The idea that both learning and logic are important has been understood for a long time, [albeit separately],” Professor Valiant explained. “We are in a good position because I think the position of learning is now very much advanced. So, we have reason to be confident that there’s a lot of competence that we have as far as learning, and it’s a good basis on which to build logic.”

Researcher Efi Tsamoura of the Samsung AI Center in Cambridge added that “An increasing number of applications for many different areas, from computer vision to natural language processing, are taking advantage of background knowledge in order to build more robust and simpler models. Why is that? It’s because logic provides us with the ability to [complement] missing labels and to use the missing labels in order to train the model.” Tsamoura also pointed out that “An increasing number of researchers from different fields, mostly applied fields, are realizing the potential of logic.”

The discussion also touched on scientific discoveries that have been made with machine learning. “I think it’s worth noting that with the advent of 5G and with 6G coming down the pipe, communication networks have gone from being extremely complicated to super-extremely complicated… and I think the opportunities to optimize and manage the systems to make them even more efficient are vast. So I think there is a great chance to bring machine learning and AI tools to bear on the structure and operation of these communication networks to make them more efficient,” said Gregory Dudek, Head of the Samsung AI Center in Montreal. “We’ve had some very nice success in Montreal in adapting the tools that exist to these relatively new problems for that domain, and [have] actually significantly moved the needle to increase the performance of these systems.”

In order to commercialize machine learning for use in various areas, continuous simulations must be conducted. How then can the gap between simulation results and real-world phenomena be narrowed? Professor Welling shared his thoughts: “[Since simulations do not actually reflect all the complexities of the world,] I think probably the solution is some hybrid solution where you would simulate as much as you can, but you also identify where your system is uncertain about its predictions. And at that point, sort of in an active sense, you are then going to acquire data for that particular problem. So, active sensing might be an interesting solution.”

At the Lightning Talks session, employees from Samsung Research’s Global AI Centers presented some of their latest research including Adaptive Sharpness-Aware Minimization(ASAM), which is a deep learning optimizer developed by Samsung Research, and Named Entity Correction for Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR).

The thoughts and findings that were shared at the Samsung AI Forum indicate that a world in which AI is merged seamlessly with our daily lives may not be that far off. Full replays of both days of the Samsung AI Forum 2021, through which viewers can learn more about the current status of AI technology, its applications, and what the future may hold, can be viewed on the event’s official website and on Samsung Electronics’ YouTube channel.

Now in its fifth year, Samsung AI Forum serves as a platform that gathers leading experts to exchange the latest technology trends and research findings. The two-day event held on 1 and 2 November (KST) enabled participants to discuss applications of AI that will make a practical contribution to people’s daily lives. In this year’s AI Forum livestreamed on Samsung Electronics’ YouTube channel, there were opportunities for researchers and students in the AI field around the world to interact with world-renowned academics and experts through Q&A sessions.

Day 1 of Samsung AI Forum was hosted by Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Samsung’s R&D hub dedicated to cutting-edge future technologies, under the theme, “AI Research for Tomorrow”.

Day 1 started with opening remarks from Dr. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman & CEO of Device Solutions at Samsung Electronics, who spoke about the wide-reaching capability of AI to address pressing global issues.

“The advancement of AI is going beyond the electronics industry and expanding to various fields, such as basic science. We expect AI to provide solutions to social issues such as climate change and environmental pollution in the future, but there are still many challenges to tackle to make this possible,” said Dr. Kim.

He also shared his optimism that Samsung AI Forum will be a key venue for experts across the industry to start conversations and collaborate on AI as a means to help humanity on various fronts.

Shining a Spotlight on AI Leaders

Also on Day 1 of Samsung AI Forum, the company announced this year’s winners of the ‘Samsung AI Researcher of the Year’ awards. The awards were launched last year to discover rising AI researchers globally. The awards were presented by Dr. Gyoyoung Jin, President and Head of SAIT, who served as the co-chair for Samsung AI Forum.

This year’s awards went to Professor Diyi Yang (Georgia Tech), Professor Jacob Andreas (MIT), Professor Judy Hoffman (Georgia Tech), Professor Phillip Isola (MIT) and Professor Yarin Gal (Oxford).

“It’s an honor for me to receive the award presented by Samsung to young researchers in the AI field,” said Professor Phillip Isola of MIT. “I’ll put more effort to further develop the current AI system to realize AI that is close to natural intelligence,” he said. Professor Isola is one of the most prominent researchers in computer vision.

Expert Highlights: Keynote Speeches

The keynote on the first day of Samsung AI Forum was given by Professor Yoshua Bengio of University of Montreal, who also served as a co-chair of Samsung AI Forum and is a Samsung AI Professor. In his keynote, entitled GFlowNets for Scientific Discovery, Professor Bengio introduced AI algorithms used within scientific fields such as physics, chemistry and biology. He presented a new algorithm called GFlowNets, which is used to increase the prediction accuracy of experiment and test data.

The keynote lecture was followed by three technology sessions entitled Scalable & Sustainable AI Computing, AI for Scientific Discovery and Trustworthy Computer Vision. In these sessions, leading academics and startups spoke alongside some of Samsung’s top researchers.

Professor Kunle Olukotun of Stanford University in the U.S., who is the co-founder of a promising AI startup called SambaNova Systems, shared his insights on ultra-low power AI computing through an effective data flow architecture in his lecture, Accelerating AI with Dataflow Computing.

Professor Gerbrand Ceder of University of California – Berkeley, who is the founding director of the U.S. federal government-led Material Genome Initiative, which began ten years ago, gave his lecture on AI/Machine Learning in Material Research and the Laboratory of the Future. Professor Antonio Torralba of MIT in Massachusetts, U.S., gave his lecture, Learning to See.

From Samsung, multiple leading researchers, including Changkyu Choi, Senior Vice President and Head of SAIT’s AI & SW Research Center presented the progress and vision regarding Samsung’s research in the AI field. The speakers introduced various AI learning model developments and their applications, and suggested the memory-powered computing architecture, including engineering ultra-low power AI computing for processing AI models and big data.

In addition, founders of startups based in Silicon Valley, including Cerebras Systems shared their insights on business models for different AI research areas and future business strategies.

‘Samsung AI Forum 2021′ can be viewed again on Samsung Electronics’ YouTube channel, and Day 2 AI forum will be held on 2 November.

Stay tuned to Samsung Newsroom for more information on the Samsung AI Forum 2021.

To offer viewers a glimpse of the exciting topics that will be discussed at SAIF 2021, Samsung has released a pair of teaser videos previewing the two-day event’s distinguished speakers and sessions.

Those who are interested can register to participate through the Samsung AI Forum’s website up until the day of the event. Those who do so will be able to access SAIF’s schedule and submit questions for the experts before the event kicks off. In the meantime, check out the videos below for a preview of what SAIF 2021 has in store, and stay tuned to Samsung Newsroom for more updates.

Day 1: AI Research for Tomorrow

On Day 1, which will be hosted by Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Samsung’s R&D hub dedicated to cutting-edge future technologies, Dr. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman & CEO of Device Solutions at Samsung Electronics, will deliver the opening remarks. Under the theme, “AI Research for Tomorrow”, renowned AI experts will discuss various AI technologies and the research direction on AI — from fundamental research to its applications – including how AI research will impact other fields such as new material development and semiconductors.

This year, Professor Yoshua Bengio, the winner of the 2018 Turing Award — often referred to as the Nobel Prize in computing — will deliver the keynote. The keynote speech will be followed by three technology sessions: Scalable and Sustainable AI Computing, AI for Scientific Discovery and Trustworthy Computer Vision.

In particular, in this year’s forum, various AI startups will provide an overview of the current trends in cutting-edge AI technology and share their actual business application models. In addition, the AI research leaders at SAIT will participate in the forum as speakers and give presentations on the current status and vision of Samsung’s AI research.

The Samsung AI Researcher of the Year awards,¹ which were established last year in an effort to discover excelling rising researchers in the field of AI, will also be presented during the forum. Last year, five researchers including Professor Kyunghyun Cho of New York University were awarded.

As the co-chairs of this year’s forum, Dr. Gyoyoung Jin, President and Head of SAIT and Professor Bengio, who was appointed as the Samsung AI Professor last year, will continue to cooperate to highlight outstanding rising researchers and expand the base of AI research.

“This year’s forum will be organized as a venue for sharing the current status of AI technology research and AI applications as well as discussing ways to transform AI into a technology that substantially contributes to our daily lives,” said Professor Bengio.

Day 2: AI in a Human World

Day 2 sessions will be hosted by Samsung Research, the company’s advanced R&D hub that leads the development of future technologies for its Consumer Electronics division and IT & Mobile Communications division. Under the theme “AI in a Human World”, Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research, will deliver the opening remarks, and AI experts who have been actively engaging in AI research activities worldwide will share their insights on the current status of AI and future research directions that will have an important impact on our lives.

The keynote will be delivered by Professor Leslie Valiant, the 2010 Turing Award winner, of Harvard University on the subject of integrating machine learning and inference for next-generation AI. This will be followed by technology sessions: Interpretability for Skeptical Minds and Understanding Matter With Deep Learning.

Dr. Daniel Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Samsung Research Global AI Center, will preside over an in-depth panel discussion with the speakers regarding the ‘future prospects and considerations of each AI sector’.

Lightning talks (5-minute speeches, 7 sessions) will also take place this year where members of the Samsung Research Global AI Center and 5 AI centers (Cambridge, U.K.; New York, U.S.; Toronto, Canada; Montreal, Canada; and Moscow, Russia) will take part.

“This year’s AI Forum will help us better understand where the current AI technology developments are heading and also about AI applicable products which are becoming smarter,” said Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research. “I expect that many people who are interested in AI will participate in the forum since it will be held as an online event this year.”

The event will be open to anyone who is interested in AI. Registration is available through the Samsung AI Forum 2021 Website from October 6 to the respective event dates.

Day 1 Session Speakers

“Scalable and Sustainable AI Computing” session by:

– Professor Kunle Olukotun, Stanford University

– Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras Systems

– Changkyu Choi, Corporate Senior Vice President of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT)

“AI for Scientific Discovery” session by:

– Professor Gerbrand Ceder, University of California, Berkeley

– Bryce Meredig, CSO of Citrine Informatics

– Young Sang Choi, Corporate Vice President of SAIT

“Trustworthy Computer Vision” session by:

– Professor Antonio Torralba, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

– Daniel Bibireata, Vice President of LandingAI

– Jae-Joon Han, Vice President of Technology of SAIT

Day 2 Session Speakers

“Interpretability for Skeptical Minds” session by:

– Been Kim, Research Scientist at Google Brain

“Understanding Matter With Deep Learning” session by:

– Professor Max Welling, Amsterdam University and Lab Head of Microsoft Research Amsterdam

¹ Samsung AI Researcher of the Year: selected among AI researchers of aged 35 or under (up to five researchers per year)

Recently, free-form displays¹ have been gaining traction as next-generation technology that will allow for both high-resolution visuals and portability at the same time. While the technology is still in its nascent stages, significant research has been carried out on stretchable displays (a core technology for free-form displays) that can be stretched in all directions like rubber bands to change their shapes.

Stretchable Display and Sensor Breakthroughs

On June 4, researchers at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Samsung’s R&D hub dedicated to cutting-edge future technologies, published research² in the world-renowned journal ‘Science Advances’ about a technology that overcomes the limitations of stretchable devices.

Through this study, stable performance in a stretchable device with high elongation was achieved. This research was also the first in the industry to prove the commercialization potential of stretchable devices, given that the technology is capable of being integrated with existing semiconductor processes.

The SAIT research team was able to integrate a stretchable organic LED (OLED) display and a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor in a single device to measure and display the user’s heart rate in real-time, thus creating the ‘stretchable electronic skin’ form factor. The success of this test case proves the feasibility of expanding the technology to further applications. This research is expected to increase the uptake of stretchable devices in the future.

▲ The SAIT research team that demonstrated the viability of stretchable devices: SAIT Organic Material Lab principal researcher Jong Won Chung (co-first author), principal researcher Youngjun Yun (corresponding author) and staff researcher Yeongjun Lee (co-first author)

OLED ‘Skin’ Display That Can Be Stretched by Up to 30%

One of the biggest achievements of this research was that the team was able to modify the composition and structure of ‘elastomer’, a polymer compound with excellent elasticity and resilience, and use existing semiconductor manufacturing processes to apply it to the substrates of stretchable OLED displays and optical blood flow sensors for the first time in the industry. The team were then able to confirm that the sensor and display continued to operate normally and did not exhibit any performance degradation with elongation of up to 30%.

▲SAIT Proto System

To put their research to the test, the SAIT researchers attached stretchable PPG heart rate sensors and OLED display systems to the inner wrist near the radial artery.³ Doing this allowed them to confirm that wrist movement did not cause any property deterioration, with the solution remaining reliable with skin elongation of up to 30%. This test also confirmed that the sensor and OLED display continued to work stably even after being stretched 1,000 times. What’s more, when measuring signals from a moving wrist, the sensor was found to pick up a heartbeat signal that was 2.4 times stronger than would be picked up by a fixed silicon sensor.

“The strength of this technology is that it allows you to measure your biometric data for a longer period without having to remove the solution when you sleep or exercise, since the patch feels like part of your skin. You can also check your biometric data right away on the screen without having to transfer it to an external device,” explained principal researcher Youngjun Yun, corresponding author of the paper. “The technology can also be expanded to use in wearable healthcare products for adults, children and infants, as well as patients with certain diseases.”

▲ Youngjun Yun, Principal researcher and corresponding author

Overcoming Technical Challenges With Stretchable Materials and Structure

Implementing stretchable display technology proves difficult because usually when a display is stretched or its shape is manipulated, the device either breaks or its performance deteriorates. In order to overcome this problem, all of the materials and elements, including the substrate, electrode, thin film transistor, emission material layer and sensor, must have physical stretchability as well as the ability to maintain their electrical properties.

Thus, the SAIT researchers replaced the plastic material used in existing stretchable displays with elastomer. The system developed by the SAIT team is the first in the sector to implement a display and sensor using photolithography processes that enable micro-patterning and large-area processing.

Elastomer is an advanced material with high elasticity and resilience, but is limited in its capacity to be applied to existing semiconductor processes because it is vulnerable to heat. To mitigate this, the team strengthened the material’s thermal resistance by tailoring its molecular composition. They also chemically integrated certain molecule chains in order to establish a resistance to the materials used in semiconductor processes.

“We applied an ‘island’ structure to alleviate the stress⁴ caused by elongation,” said staff researcher Yeongjun Lee, co-first author of the paper. “More stress was induced in the area of the elastomer, which has a relatively low elasticity coefficient⁵ and is thus more likely to become deformed. This allowed us to minimize the stress sustained by the OLED pixel area, which is more vulnerable to such pressure. We applied a stretchable electrode material (cracked metal) that resists deformation to the elastomer area, and this allowed the spaces and wiring electrodes between the pixels to stretch and shrink without the OLED pixels themselves becoming deformed.”

▲ OLED and cracked metal electrodes in an island structure

▲ Yeongjun Lee, staff researcher and co-first author

Commercialization and Expanded Applications

The stretchable sensor was made in a way that makes continuous heartbeat measurements possible with a high degree of sensitivity compared to existing fixed wearable sensors. The solution does this by facilitating close adhesion to the skin, which minimizes performance inconsistencies that can be caused by movement.⁶

The stretchable sensor and OLED display developed by the SAIT team were brought about by overcoming limitations in existing device performance and operational processes, including those of current stretchable materials. The work done by the SAIT team is particularly significant in that it has secured chemical and heat resistance for the elastomer material, thereby making commercialization of stretchable devices with high resolution and large screens more likely in the future.

“Our research is still in the early stages, but our goal is to realize and commercialize stretchable devices by increasing system resolution, stretchability, and measurement accuracy to a level that makes mass production possible,” said principal researcher Jong Won Chung, co-first author of the paper. “In addition to the heartbeat sensor that was applied in this test case, we plan to incorporate stretchable sensors and high-resolution freeform displays to enable users to monitor things like peripheral oxygen saturation, electromyogram readings and blood pressure.”

▲ Jong Won Chung, principal researcher and co-first author

¹ Displays that feature significantly smaller pixels, allowing for more freedom when determining their shapes

² Paper title: “Standalone real-time health monitoring patch based on a stretchable organic optoelectronic system”

³ The superficial artery in the forearm that is usually used to take one’s pulse

⁴ The resistance force that is created in a material when it is compressed, bent, twisted, or has other external forces applied to it

⁵ Rate of elasticity that shows the degree to which an object stretches and deforms

⁶ The motion artifact effect

(From left) Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) Principal Researcher Jungkwuen An, Staff Researcher Kanghee Won, and Master Hong-Seok Lee

As part of an effort to find ways to apply holograms to a wider range of fields, researchers from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), which has long recognized holograms’ limitless potential, began to study the development of holographic displays.¹ After eight years of trials, the team published a thesis on slim-panel holographic video displays in the world-renowned scientific journal, Nature Communications.

What does SAIT’s thesis mean for the study and development of holograms, and how could holograms eventually be applied to our daily lives? To answer those questions and more, Samsung Newsroom interviewed Master Hong-Seok Lee of the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, along with Principal Researcher Jungkwuen An and Staff Researcher Kanghee Won.

Creating Lifelike Objects With Light

In a nutshell, holograms create images of objects that don’t actually exist. In terms of their ability to produce realistic images, they’re similar to the high-resolution displays that we see throughout our daily lives. The key difference between them boils down to the dimension at which the images are presented. As Hong-Seok Lee explained, “While a conventional display depicts images based on light intensity, holograms control not just the intensity of light but also its phase to produce images that appear three-dimensional.”

According to Jungkwuen An, a key reason why holographic displays are seen as the most ideal form of 3D display comes down to how human beings perceive depth. “The human eye utilizes various depth perception cues, including binocular parallax, two pupil angles, focus adjustment and motion parallax,² to recognize the depth of an object,” said An. “While most 3D display methods provide only some of these cues, a hologram provides them all. It perfectly replicates objects with light, producing images that look as lifelike as the real thing.”

Principal Researcher Jungkwuen An

Paving the Way for Holograms’ Commercialization

From facilitating hospital visits for patients in quarantine to producing virtual blueprints, virtual navigation cues, and even projections of ancient artifacts, the possible applications for hologram technology are wide and varied. However, before holograms can be applied to more fields, researchers will need to address one of the biggest barriers to the technology’s widespread commercialization, which relates to the correlation between screen size and viewing angle.

One of the key limitations of hologram technology is that the optimal viewing angle becomes narrower when a screen is enlarged, and the screen size becomes smaller as the viewing angle increases. This means that if a 2mmX1mm full HD holographic display has a 30° viewing angle, increasing the size of the hologram to 200mmX100mm will narrow the viewing angle to 0.3°.

Staff Researcher Kanghee Won

In order to solve the issue of narrow viewing angles, SAIT’s holographic display research team developed a special optical element called a steering-backlight unit (S-BLU). As Kanghee Won explained, “An S-BLU consists of a thin, panel-shaped light source called a coherent-backlight unit (C-BLU), which transforms an incident beam into a collimated beam, and a beam deflector, which can adjust the incident beam to a desired angle. A conventional 4K screen 10 inches in size offers a very small viewing angle of 0.6°. However, you can expand the viewing angle roughly 30-fold by bending the image toward the viewer using S-BLU.”

In the process of overcoming the narrow viewing angle issue, the team created a new kind of holographic display that features a thin, flat-panel design just like those seen in the market today. Another notable achievement of the study is that it identified a method for generating 4K holographic images in real time that utilizes a single-chip field-programmable gate array (FPGA)³ for hologram calculation. The new method utilizes what’s known as a ‘layer-based’ calculation, while most methods employ a process known as ‘point cloud-based’ calculation.

Calculating holograms in real time using FPGA, the new method optimizes an algorithm by applying conditions that prevent information loss and excessive sampling. These advancements, Lee explained, could help pave the way for holograms to find their way into more aspects of everyday life. “From creation to reproduction of holograms, a complete system was implemented to secure the possibility of commercialization,” said Lee.

The Key To the Future of Displays

While the thought of holograms becoming a part of daily life is no doubt exciting, the researchers stressed that the technology still has a long way to go before it resembles the holograms we’ve seen in science fiction films. This is because making holograms an everyday sight will require the development of not just holographic displays but also holographic content, holographic filming devices, and processes for transmitting the vast amounts of data that holograms will generate.

As Won pointed out, however, there are ways that holograms could start popping up in our daily lives sooner rather than later. “For example, we may start seeing limited use of holograms to produce things like keypads and even holographic menus,” said Won. “As holograms become more common, we’ll also begin to see more use of non-contact UIs (user interfaces) based on finger gestures, voice, eye tracking, brain wave recognition, and other forms of input.”

Master Hong-Seok Lee

In their thesis, the researchers suggest that adopting a new framework for holographic displays will be key to clearing the most important hurdle to commercialization. “We will continue to devote our utmost efforts to establishing holograms as the future of displays,” said Lee.

¹ An image created using hologram technology is called a holographic image. A device that produces holographic images is referred to as a holographic display.

² Motion parallax refers to the fact that objects moving at a constant speed appear to move faster if they are closer to the observer than they would if they were farther away.

³ An FPGA is a type of programmable non-memory semiconductor. Unlike conventional semiconductors, which cannot alter their circuits, an FPGA can be reprogrammed to suit a desired purpose.

This November 2 and 3, experts, researchers and interested viewers alike convened virtually to share the latest developments in AI research and discussed some of the most pressing and relevant issues facing AI research today.

Making the Best Use of AI in a Rapidly Changing World

AI technologies have developed remarkably in recent years, thanks in no small part to the hard work and diverse research projects being done by academic and corporate researchers alike all around the world. But given the rapid and significant changes brought on by the recent global pandemic, attention has recently been turning to how AI can be used to help solve real-life problems, and what methods might be most effective in order to create such solutions.

The first day of the forum, organized by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), was opened with a keynote speech by Dr. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman and CEO of Device Solutions at Samsung Electronics, who acknowledged the importance of the discussions set to take place at this year’s AI Forum around the past, present and future of the role of AI. Dr. Kim also affirmed Samsung Electronics’ dedication to working with global researchers in order to develop products and services with meaningful real-world impact.

The first day of the Forum then continued with a series of fascinating invited talks given by several global leading academics and professionals. Professor Yoshua Bengio of University of Montreal, Professor Yann LeCun of New York University and Professor Chelsea Finn of Stanford University were the first three to present, following which the Samsung AI Researcher of the Year awards were presented. After this ceremony, SAIT Fellow Professor Donhee Ham of Harvard University, Dr. Tara Sainath of Google Research and Dr. Jennifer Wortman Vaughan of Microsoft Research gave their talks.

Taking AI to the Next Phases of its Development

The first day’s invited talks were followed by a virtual live panel discussion, moderated by Young Sang Choi, Vice President of Samsung Electronics, and attended by Professor Bengio, Professor LeCun, Professor Finn, Dr. Sainath, Dr. Wortman Vaughan and Dr. Inyup Kang, President of Samsung Electronics’ System LSI business. “It is my great pleasure to join this Forum,” noted Dr. Kang. “I feel as if I am standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Questions were given to the panel that invited the experts to discuss the ways in which computational bottlenecks can be overcome in order to take AI systems to the next level and be developed to possess the same intelligibility as the human brain. The panelists weighed the benefits of scaling neural nets as opposed to searching for new algorithms, with Dr. Kang noting that, “We have to try both. Given the scale of human synapses, I doubt that we can achieve the human level of intelligibility using just current technologies. Eventually we will get there, but we definitely need new algorithms, too.”

Professor LeCun noted how AI research is not just constrained by current scaling methods. “We are missing some major pieces to being able to reach human-level intelligence, or even just animal-level intelligence,” he said, adding that perhaps, in the near future, we might be able to develop machines that can at least reach the scale of an animal such as a cat. Professor Finn concurred with Professor LeCun. “We still don’t even have the AI capabilities to make a bowl of cereal,” she noted. “Such basic things are still beyond what our current algorithms are capable of.”

Building on the topic of his invited talk, Professor Bengio added that, in order for future systems to have intelligence comparable to that of the way humans learn as children, a world model will need to be developed that is based on unsupervised learning. “Our models need to act like human babies in order to go after knowledge in an active way,” he explained.

The panel discussion then moved on to the ways in which the community can bridge the gaps between current technologies and future, human-intelligence level technologies, with all the experts agreeing that there is still much work to be done in developing systems that mimic the way human synapses work. “A lot of current research directions are trying to address these gaps,” reassured Professor Bengio.

Next, the panel shared their thoughts on how to make AI ‘fairer’ given the inherent biases possessed by today’s societies, with the experts debating the balance that needs to be struck between systems development reform, institutional regulation and corporate interest. Dr. Wortman Vaughan made the case for introducing a diversity of viewpoints across all parts of the system building process. “I would like to see regulation around processes for people to follow when designing machine learning systems rather than trying to make everyone meet the same outcomes.”

The final question given to the panel asked for their thoughts on which field will be the next successful application area for end-to-end models. “End-to-end models changed the field of speech recognition by reducing latency and removing the need for internet connection,” noted Dr. Sainath. “Thanks to this breakthrough, going forward, you’re going to see applications of end-to-end models for such purposes as long meeting transcriptions. We always speak of having ‘one model to rule them all’, and this is a challenging and interesting research area that has been expanded by the possibilities of end-to-end models as we look to develop a model capable of recognizing all the languages in the world.”

Enhancing Human Experience through AI

The second day of the AI Forum 2020 was hosted by Samsung Research, the advanced R&D hub of Samsung Electronics that leads the development of future technologies for the company’s end-product business.

In his opening keynote speech, Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research, outlined the areas in which Samsung has been accelerating its AI research to the end of providing real-world benefits to their users, including more traditional AI fields (vision and graphics, speech and language, robotics), on-device AI and the health and wellness field.

After showcasing a range of Samsung products bolstered with AI technologies, Dr. Seung affirmed that, in order to best extend the capabilities of AI to truly help people in meaningful ways, academic researchers and corporations need to come together to find best-practice solutions.

Putting the Future of AI into Perspective

Following Dr. Seung’s speech, the second day of the Forum proceeded with a series of invited talks around the theme of ‘Human-Centric AI’ by Professor Christopher Manning of Stanford University, Professor Devi Parikh of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Professor Subbarao Kambhampati of Arizona State University and Executive Vice President of Samsung Research Daniel D. Lee, Head of Samsung’s AI Center in New York and Professor at Cornell Tech.

The expert talks were followed by a live panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Seung and joined by Professor Manning, Professor Parikh, Professor Kambhampati and EVP Lee. Dr. Seung kicked off the discussion with a question about a topic raised in Professor Kambhampati’s speech around the potential issues that could lead to the risk of data manipulation as AI develops. “As AI technology continues to develop, it is important that we stay vigilant about the potential for manipulation and work to solve the issues of any AI systems’ inadvertent data manipulations,” explained Professor Kambhampati.

Dr. Seung then posed a much-requested viewer question to the panel. Given that one of the most practical concerns in AI research is the obtaining of data, the experts were asked whether they believe that companies or academic researchers need to develop new means of handling and managing data. Acknowledging that academics often struggle to secure data while companies possess alleviated data shortage problems yet elevated restraints around the usage of their data, Professor Parikh made a case for the need of new research methods that can be modeled with insufficient data or with cooperation between academia and industry, including open research methods. “In many areas, there are big public data sets available,” she noted. “Researchers outside of companies are able to access and use these. But further to this, some of the most interesting fields in AI today are the ones where we don’t have much data – these represent some of the most cutting-edge problems and approaches.”

The final question took the panel back to the theme of the AI Forum’s second day, ‘Human-Centered AI’, wherein the panelists were asked whether or not they believe that AI will be capable of equaling human intelligence in the next 70 years, since that is the period of time it has taken us to get to where we are today in the field of AI research. EVP Lee reasoned that AI still has a way to go – but that 70 years is a long time. “I am optimistic,” noted EVP Lee, “but there are lots of hard problems in the way. We need to have academics and companies working on a goal like this together.”

“We are currently reaching the limits of the range of problems we can solve using just lots of data,” summarized Professor Manning. “Before we see AI developments like this on a large scale, an area that we should emphasize is the production of AI systems that work for regular people, not just huge corporations,” he concluded.

The Samsung AI Forum 2020 ended with a warm thanks to all the esteemed experts who had taken part in the two-day Forum and a shared hope to hold next year’s Forum offline. All the sessions and invited talks from the AI Forum 2020 are available to watch on the official Samsung YouTube channel.

This year’s AI Forum, the fourth of its kind, is being held over two days this November 2 and 3. The first day of the event, hosted by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Samsung’s R&D hub dedicated to cutting-edge future technologies, is enabling participants to facilitate discussions around how to make the best use of AI technologies in a way that can benefit our daily lives in a rapidly changing world, particularly within the context of the unprecedented situations that have arisen recently due to the global pandemic.

AI Forum Day 1: The Past, Present and Future of AI

On November 2, Dr. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman & CEO of Device Solutions at Samsung Electronics, commemorated the start of the first day of the AI Forum 2020 by delivering an opening speech that highlighted how AI technologies have shown remarkable progress over the years. He went on to note that, given these changes, many are expecting AI to address the issues brought on by the recent pandemic, but highlighted that since AI bases its models on massive amounts of real-life data and simulations, the task of modeling the current pandemic and other natural disasters with AI was a daunting one.

Dr. Kim went on to provide his own views on the ways in which AI technologies can move forward and be harnessed to have meaningful impact on real world problems, and also highlighted that Samsung Electronics, as a major provider of core technologies in the AI ecosystem, is proactively co-operating with global researchers to seek solutions to such real world problems. Dr. Kim ended his opening speech with the expectation that meaningful discussions on the present and future of AI technologies and their benefit for humanity were set to take place during this year’s Forum.

Recognizing Leading Talent in the Field

At this year’s AI Forum, Samsung introduced their inaugural Samsung AI Researcher of the Year awards with the view to identify prominent emerging researchers in the field from around the world and to support their research activities.

This year’s Samsung AI Research of the Year awards went to Professor Kyunghyun Cho of New York University, Professor Chelsea Finn of Stanford University, Professor Seth Flaxman of Imperial College London, Professor Jiajun Wu of Stanford University and Professor Cho-Jui Hsieh of UCLA.

Professor Kyunghyun Cho, a globally recognized researcher in natural language processing, has been publishing a consistent stream of acclaimed papers across the medicine, biology and optimization disciplines. “I am honored to have received a Samsung AI Researcher of the Year award and am committed to developing AI-focused research further down the road,” said Professor Cho of the recognition.

Expert Highlights: Keynote Speeches

Professor Yoshua Bengio, who served as this year’s co-chair and was selected as Samsung AI Professor of the Year, gave a presentation titled Towards Discovering Casual Representations. In his lecture, Professor Bengio explained that, up until now, conventional deep learning technologies have been relying on inference to recognize sensual information and learn from it, but AI technologies that are instead capable of learning the causality between hidden variables before drawing conclusions could be capable of making inferences just as humans do, and hence would be able to respond to unprogrammed situations. With visions of such a type of AI in mind, Professor Bengio shared the initial outcomes of his research and suggested how, based on this, AI technologies can make steps forward.

Professor Yann LeCun of New York University, a researcher who pioneered the Convolutional Neural Network widely applied to video recognition technologies, presented his latest model related to Self-Supervised Learning. Unlike supervised learning which returns a given answer to each given data set, self-supervised learning adopts a learning model consisting of autonomously creating questions within data and subsequently finding answers. Such a method has been applied to a massive linguistic model capable of generating sentences just as people do. Professor LeCun highlighted how self-supervised learning is similar to the way children experience and learn the world, and presented an energy-based model based on such a comparison.

Professor Chelsea Finn of Stanford University, a young researcher in the spotlight within the field of meta learning, gave a lecture titled From Few-Shot Adaptation to Uncovering Symmetries. In her lecture, Professor Finn introduced meta learning technologies in which AI, in spite of changes in data, can adapt swiftly to untrained data, and proceeded to share success stories of the application of these technologies in the areas of robotics and new drug candidate material design.

Professor Donhee Ham, Fellow at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology and Professor at Harvard University, delivered a presentation titled Reconstruction of the Brain. In his presentation, he highlighted that the current level of AI is based on the human brain but in fact works in a way different from how the brain functions, causing limitations to its capability. Professor Ham introduced cutting-edge neural science technologies that could mimic the structure and functionalities of the human brain circuit and create computer integrated circuits on their own.

Industry experts also took part in giving presentations. Dr. Tara Sainath of Google Research released the latest research outcomes of end-to-end models developed for speech recognition capable of enhancing the accuracy, efficiency and multi-lingual capability of voice assistant services widely available across smart devices.

Dr. Jennifer Wortman Vaughan of Microsoft Research gave a lecture titled Intelligibility Throughout the Machine Learning Life Cycle. She shared a human-centric machine learning concept, highlighting that, in order to develop a fair machine learning system capable of garnering the trust of people, people’s clear understanding of the system is required. Dr. Wortman Vaughan then introduced research outcomes that can objectively verify such a mechanism.

Since the Samsung AI Forum 2020 was held virtually this year, students and researchers alike in the AI research field from all over the world were able to engage in online discussions and exchanges. When tuning in to the Forum’s lectures on Samsung Electronics’ YouTube channel, attendees could ask questions to and receive answers from the distinguished speakers thanks to a real-time chat functionality.

Stay tuned to Samsung Newsroom for more information on the Samsung AI Forum 2020.

Since blue is known to be the most difficult color to implement out of the three primary QLED colors (red, blue and green), this achievement – coming in the wake of Samsung’s development of red QLED technology last November – once again proves Samsung’s excellence in the quantum dot technology sphere.

Blue Proves the Most Difficult of the Three Primary QLED Colors

Quantum dots (QDs) are semiconductor particles that measure a few nanometers in diameter (tens of thousands of times narrower than a single human hair). When illuminated, they re-emit light of a certain color depending on their size.

The blue QD, which has the largest band gap¹ among the three primary colors, rapidly oxidizes upon exposure to external light, resulting in a short lifespan and low luminous efficiency.² For this reason, up to now the industry had failed to develop even the technology required for blue quantum dot light-emitting diodes.

Overcoming Another Challenge by Developing Blue QLED Technology

But now, SAIT has successfully developed blue QLED technology, achieving industry-leading results such as 20.2% improved luminous efficiency, 88,900 nits of maximum luminance and 16,000 hours of QLED lifetime (measured at half-brightness for 100-nit luminance). These results were recorded in a study titled “Efficient and stable blue quantum dot light-emitting diode”, which was published by the journal Nature on October 14, 2020.

Eunjoo Jang, Samsung Fellow

“Samsung’s distinctive quantum dot technology has once again overcome the limitations of existing technology in the industry,” noted Dr. Eunjoo Jang, Samsung Fellow and corresponding author for the study. “I hope that this study goes on to help accelerate the commercialization of Quantum Dot light-emitting diodes (QLEDs).”

Quantum dots are made up of a basic structure of a core, a shell, and multiple ligands.³ In order to better stabilize the QD materials and secure durable photoresponse functionality, the researchers applied a structure with quantum dot double emitting layers and shorter ligands on the surface of the blue-light-emitting QDs while also improving current injection rates.

Taehyung Kim, Principal Researcher

Dr. Taehyung Kim, Principal Researcher and the first author of the study, said, “This research is meaningful in that we have not only established Quantum Dot light-emitting diode performance, but have also proven that the technology can deliver top-notch performance at the element level.”

(From left) Kwang-Hee Kim, Taehyung Kim, Eunjoo Jang, Sungwoo Kim, Seon-Myeong Choi from SAIT

¹ The difference of energy between the valence band of electrons and the conduction band.

² The ratio of the emitting luminous flux to the total input flux of source.

³ The core absorbs and re-emits light, while the shell layer surrounding the QD core improves lifespan and photoluminescence efficiency by preventing temperature/humidity-related damage. The branch-shaped ligands are located on the surface of the QD’s shell and help maintain inter-particle distance.

Day 1: AI Technologies for Changes in the Real World

On Day 1, which will be hosted by Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Samsung’s R&D hub dedicated to cutting-edge future technologies, Dr. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman & CEO of Device Solutions at Samsung Electronics will deliver opening remarks. Renowned AI experts will subsequently give presentations under the theme “AI Technologies for Changes in the Real World.”

This year, Dr. Inyup Kang, President of System LSI Business at Samsung Electronics will join the panel discussion with the presenters. Topics for in-depth discussions include: challenges that need to be overcome on a global level through AI technologies over the next decade; limitations that AI faces in tackling real-world issues such as a pandemic or climate change; and whether humans need human-level AI, among other topics.

Day 1 Sessions:

• “Towards Discovering Causal Representations” by Prof. Yoshua Bengio, the University of Montreal
• “Self-Supervised Learning” by Prof. Yann LeCun, New York University
• “Meta-Learning: From Few-Shot Adaptation to Uncovering Symmetries” by Prof. Chelsea Finn, Stanford University
• “Reconstruction of the Brain” by Prof. Donhee Ham, Fellow at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Professor at Harvard University
• “Intelligibility Throughout the Machine Learning Life Cycle” by Dr. Jennifer Wortman Vaughan, Microsoft Research
• “End-To-End Models for Speech Recognition” by Dr. Tara Sainath, Google Research

Professor Yoshua Bengio, the winner of the 2018 Turing Award, often referred to as “the Nobel Prize in computing,” is assuming co-chairmanship for the forum, and the newly established “Samsung AI Researcher of the Year” award will be presented at the event.

The awardee of the “Researcher of the Year” honor is selected among global AI researchers under the age of 35 through extensive evaluations and assessments made by AI experts at both Samsung Electronics and renowned academic institutions. On the first day of the forum, the award ceremony will be held to present the USD 30,000 prize and the awardee will give a presentation.

Additionally, Samsung has named Professor Yoshua Bengio as “Samsung AI Professor.” As the co-chair of the forum with Dr. Sungwoo Hwang, President and Head of SAIT, Professor Bengio will utilize his wide networks and expertise in the field of deep learning to broaden cooperation for expanding the boundaries of AI research at Samsung Electronics.

“We have an outstanding set of speakers and discussion topics which promise to shed light on both the limitations of current AI technologies, which raise both practical and theoretical questions, and research directions aimed at reaching human-level intelligence,” said Professor Yoshua Bengio.

Day 2: Human-Centered AI

Day 2 sessions will be hosted by Samsung Research, the advanced R&D hub of the company that leads the development of future technologies for Samsung Electronics’ SET (end-products) Business. Under the theme “Human-Centered AI,” Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research, will deliver the keynote speech, and AI experts who have been actively engaging in AI research activities worldwide will share their insights.

Day 2 Sessions:

• “Natural Language Processing” by Prof. Christopher Manning, Stanford University
• “Vision” by Prof. Devi Parikh, the Georgia Institute of Technology
• “Human Robot Interaction” by Prof. Subbarao Kambhampati, Arizona State University
• “Robotics” by Prof. Daniel D. Lee, Cornell Tech, Executive Vice President at Samsung Research and Head of Samsung AI Center-New York

Professor Christopher Manning, a renowned expert in natural language processing (NLP), will speak on the current status and future of NLP technologies required for Human-Centered AI. He previously delivered the keynote speech at the first Samsung AI Forum in 2017 on the development of neural network-based natural language understanding technology. Samsung has been working with Professor Manning on Q&A and dialogue modeling and will continue to collaborate with him on the overall development of NLP technologies.

After the presentations, Sebastian Seung, a pioneer in AI research based on neuroscience, will preside over an in-depth panel discussion with the four speakers regarding the prospects and future direction of Human-Centered AI.

“We hope that Samsung AI Forum 2020 will contribute to enhanced understanding of AI technology developments and its applications that can bring positive impact to human lives,” said Seung. “Especially since this year’s forum will be held online, I hope that the event will be an opportunity for greater participation of those interested in AI technologies.”

The event will be open to pre-registered attendees. Registration is available through the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology website and the Samsung Research website starting October 6.

2D Materials – The Key to Overcoming Scalability Challenges

Recently, SAIT has been working on the research and development of two-dimensional (2D) materials – crystalline materials with a single layer of atoms. Specifically, the institute has been working on the research and development of graphene, and has achieved groundbreaking research outcomes in this area such as the development of a new graphene transistor as well as a novel method of producing large-area, single-crystal wafer-scale graphene. In addition to researching and developing graphene, SAIT has been working to accelerate the material’s commercialization.

“To enhance the compatibility of graphene with silicon-based semiconductor processes, wafer-scale graphene growth on semiconductor substrates should be implemented at a temperature lower than 400°C.” said Hyeon-Jin Shin, a graphene project leader and Principal Researcher at SAIT. “We are also continuously working to expand the applications of graphene beyond semiconductors.”

2D Material Transformed – Amorphous Boron Nitride

The newly discovered material, called amorphous boron nitride (a-BN), consists of boron and nitrogen atoms with an amorphous molecule structure. While amorphous boron nitride is derived from white graphene, which includes boron and nitrogen atoms arranged in a hexagonal structure, the molecular structure of a-BN in fact makes it uniquely distinctive from white graphene.

Amorphous boron nitride has a best-in-class ultra-low dielectric constant of 1.78 with strong electrical and mechanical properties, and can be used as an interconnect isolation material to minimize electrical interference. It was also demonstrated that the material can be grown on a wafer scale at a low temperature of just 400°C. Thus, amorphous boron nitride is expected to be widely applied to semiconductors such as DRAM and NAND solutions, and especially in next generation memory solutions for large-scale servers.

“Recently, interest in 2D materials and the new materials derived from them has been increasing. However, there are still many challenges in applying the materials to existing semiconductor processes.” said Seongjun Park, Vice President and Head of Inorganic Material Lab, SAIT. “We will continue to develop new materials to lead the semiconductor paradigm shift.”

Compared to widely used lithium-ion batteries, which utilize liquid electrolytes, all-solid-state batteries support greater energy density, which opens the door for larger capacities, and utilize solid electrolytes, which are demonstrably safer. However, the lithium metal anodes that are frequently used in all-solid-state batteries, are prone to trigger the growth of dendrites¹ which can produce undesirable side effects that reduce a battery’s lifespan and safety.

To overcome those effects, Samsung’s researchers proposed utilizing, for the first time, a silver-carbon (Ag-C) composite layer as the anode. The team found that incorporating an Ag-C layer into a prototype pouch cell enabled the battery to support a larger capacity, a longer cycle life, and enhanced its overall safety. Measuring just 5µm (micrometers) thick, the ultrathin Ag-C nanocomposite layer allowed the team to reduce anode thickness and increase energy density up to 900Wh/L. It also enabled them to make their prototype approximately 50 percent smaller by volume than a conventional lithium-ion battery.

This promising research is expected to help drive the expansion of electric vehicles (EVs). The prototype pouch cell that the team developed would enable an EV to travel up to 800km on a single charge, and features a cycle life of over 1,000 charges.

(From left) Yuichi Aihara, Principal Engineer from SRJ, Yong-Gun Lee, Principal Researcher and Dongmin Im, Master from SAIT

As Dongmin Im, Master at SAIT’s Next Generation Battery Lab and the leader of the project explained, “The product of this study could be a seed technology for safer, high-performance batteries of the future. Going forward, we will continue to develop and refine all-solid-state battery materials and manufacturing technologies to help take EV battery innovation to the next level.”

¹ Dendrites are needle-like crystals that can develop on the anode of a battery during charging.

Recently, researchers at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Samsung Electronics, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), developed an innovative, non-invasive method for monitoring blood glucose levels that utilizes a technique known as Raman spectroscopy. On January 24, the researchers presented their findings in Science Advances, a scientific journal from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

(From left) Sung Hyun Nam, Hojun Chang, Yun Sang Park, Woochang Lee and Jongae Park, from SAIT’s Mobile Healthcare Lab

Raman spectroscopy is a spectroscopic method that utilizes lasers for chemical composition identification. Previous studies that utilized Raman spectroscopy for glucose sensing in recent decades demonstrated a capability to measure glucose mainly by presenting statistical correlations to the reference glucose concentration. However, those studies raised questions regarding the effectiveness and accuracy of using Raman spectroscopy for glucose measurement due to a lack of direct evidence for glucose sensing.

To break through the limitations that arose in prior studies, Samsung’s researchers developed an off-axis Raman spectroscopy system that enables the direct observation of glucose Raman peaks from in vivo skin. Utilizing this system, they demonstrated one of the highest prediction accuracies among non-invasive technologies. The research team also developed an innovative technique for reducing the effects of movement artifacts on glucose sensing in Raman spectroscopy.

“Non-invasive blood glucose monitoring has been a topic of great discussion for decades, and I believe that our findings will help guide the direction of future studies for non-invasive glucose sensing,” said Dr. Sung Hyun Nam, Master at SAIT’s Mobile Healthcare Lab. “We will continue to solve challenging problems with the belief that this will lead to the commercialization of non-invasive blood glucose sensors, and ultimately help make life easier for people with diabetes.”

The authors of this groundbreaking project are Dr. Eunjoo Jang, Samsung Fellow, and Dr. Yu-Ho Won, a Principal Researcher at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology. By improving the structure of Quantum Dots, the team managed to hugely improve quantum efficiency, as well as extend the lifetime of the QLED element. The team found, at the conclusion of their study, that their method had improved quantum efficiency by 21.4% and increased the QLED lifetime to a million hours.

“Thanks to Samsung’s distinctive core material technology, we were able to work towards exploring the potentials of next-generation displays,” noted Dr. Jang. “Going forward, we are looking to expand the range of development of ecofriendly displays by adopting Quantum Dots in new structures.”

“This study has enabled the production of Quantum Dots with high efficiency regardless of shell thickness by providing a better understanding of the mechanism that produces Quantum Dots,” added Dr. Won.

In 2015, Samsung launched its Cadmium-free (Cd-free) Quantum Dot TV and continues to lead the development of next generation eco-friendly displays, having obtained over 170 patents on element structure to this end.

Dr. Eunjoo Jang, Samsung Fellow (left) and Dr. Yu-Ho Won, Principal Researcher

Samsung Electronics is committed to leading advancements in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), with the hopes of ushering in a brighter future. To discuss what the future may hold for AI technology, and to address and overcome the technological challenges that researchers are currently facing, the company recently hosted its third annual Samsung AI Forum.

Held from November 4–5 in Seoul, this year’s forum featured renowned AI experts from around the world, who offered intriguing ideas for addressing some of the most pressing challenges facing AI research today.

Predicting the Next Big Trends in AI

(From left) Profs. Yoshua Bengio, Kyunghyun Cho, Noah Smith and Abhinav Gupta

Modern AI technology is not only capable of analyzing data with algorithms, it’s also making strides toward achieving human-like cognition. With increases in computing power and advances in deep learning, AI technology is attempting to analyze data on its own, and learning to identify the most appropriate response for a given situation or context. The application of big data in deep learning is accelerating this trend.

While recent advancements have proven promising, the speakers at this year’s AI forum agreed that certain technological challenges remain unaddressed. Prof. Kyunghyun Cho of New York University put the technology’s current status in simple terms. “Imagine a hypothetical AI agent equipped with the current technology,” said Prof. Cho. “It has barely opened its eyes so that it can see and detect objects; it has barely opened its ears to listen to people and hear what they are saying; it has barely opened its mouth to speak short utterances; it is barely learning to move its limbs. In other words, we have just taken a tiny step toward building a truly intelligent machine – or a set of algorithms to drive such an intelligent agent.”

Prof. Noah Smith of the University of Washington expanded on this point, noting that “We’ve seen a lot of progress through the use of increasingly ‘deep’ neural networks trained on ever-larger datasets.” Prof. Smith also identified preparing efficient algorithms, reducing system construction costs and improving data learning methods as points that will need to be addressed in order to take AI technology to the next level.

The speakers also offered their opinions on where AI advancements should focus next, spotlighting things like wireless network controls, increasing AI’s autonomy, expanding AI’s applications in chemical and biological research, and streamlining interactions between humans and AI.

As Prof. Abhinav Gupta of Carnegie Mellon University explained, “In the past few years, we have made significant advancements in AI, but most of these advancements have been in solving specific tasks where lots of data and supervision are available. On the other hand, humans can perform hundreds of thousands of tasks, often with little to no supervision or data for them. This is the next frontier in AI: developing general purpose smart and intelligent agents without access to lots of data and supervision.”

Going Beyond Deep Learning

The first day of the forum was organized by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), which was established under the philosophy of fostering ‘boundless research for breakthroughs.’ Keynote sessions saw distinguished experts deliver presentations on deep learning research methods that are driving AI innovation.

Dr. Kinam Kim, President & CEO of Device Solutions at Samsung Electronics, kicked off the event by discussing Samsung’s motivation for bringing these renowned AI experts together under the same roof. “AI technology is already impacting various aspects of our society,” said Dr. Kim. “Here at the Samsung AI Forum, alongside some of the greatest minds in the industry, we will discuss and suggest directions and strategies for AI development with the hope of making the world a better place.”

Dr. Kim then yielded the stage to the day’s first distinguished speaker, Prof. Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal, who presented a lecture entitled ‘Towards Compositional Understanding of the World by Deep Learning.’

“Humans are much better than current AI systems at generalizing out-of-distribution,” Prof. Bengio explained. “We propose that learning purely from text is not sufficient, and we need to strive for learning agents that build a model of the world, to which linguistic labels can be associated.”

“The focus of future deep learning methodology,” he continued, “will be how the agent perspective common in reinforcement learning can help deep learning discover better representations of knowledge.”

Next, Prof. Trevor Darrell of the University of California at Berkeley presented an engrossing lecture entitled ‘Adapting and Explaining Deep Learning for Autonomous Systems.’ Prof. Darrell’s presentation spotlighted limitations of deep learning technology when it comes to developing autonomous driving systems, and introduced approaches to help overcome those issues.

As Prof. Darrell explained, “The learning of layered or ‘deep’ representations has recently enabled low-cost sensors for autonomous vehicles and the efficient automated analysis of visual semantics in online media. But these models have typically required prohibitive amounts of training data, and thus may only work well in the environment they have been trained in.”

Prof. Darrell then suggested approaches for developing explainable deep learning models, including introspective approaches that visualize compositional structures in a deep network, as well as third-person approaches that can provide a natural language justification for the classification decision of a deep model.

Afterward, Prof. Kyunghyun Cho of New York University took to the stage to deliver a riveting presentation entitled ‘Three Flavors of Neural Sequence Generation.’

“Standard neural sequence generation methods,” Prof. Cho explained, “assume a pre-specified generation order, such as left-to-right generation. Despite its wild success in recent years, there’s a lingering question of whether this is necessary, and if there is any other way to generate such a sequence in an order automatically learned from data – without having to pre-specify it, or relying on external tools.” He went on to introduce three alternatives that could potentially be used in sequence modeling: parallel decoding, recursive set prediction, and insertion-based generation.

Day one of the Samsung AI Forum included a panel discussion featuring (from left) Profs. Simon Lacoste-Julien, Jia Deng, Yoshua Bengio, Jackie Cheung, Sanja Fidler and Kyunghyun Cho.

Day one’s keynote speeches were followed by a panel discussion, moderated by the University of Montreal’s Prof. Simon Lacoste-Julien, that discussed establishing data sets for deep learning models. Prof. Sanja Fidler of the University of Toronto proposed a new tool that enables more detailed labeling of image data, while Prof. Jackie Cheung of McGill University suggested an alternative to replace automatic text summarization systems that are based on news articles.

Prof. Jia Deng of Princeton University outlined a method for establishing a new recognition system that enables AI to analyze data more efficiently, and Prof. Lacoste-Julien discussed ways to enhance the learning efficiency of generative adversarial networks (GANs).

Developing AI with Human-like Intelligence

The second day of the forum was organized by Samsung Research, the advanced R&D hub that leads the development future technologies for Samsung Electronics’ SET(end-products) Business. Day two was headlined by experts from a variety of fields who discussed how they’ve been applying AI in their ongoing research and revealed more innovative ways to address the technology’s current limitations.

DJ Koh, President and CEO of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics, set the stage for day two’s illuminating presentations by sharing his perspective on the importance of Samsung’s investment in AI. “In this hyper-connected world, where everything is connected through 5G, AI and IoT technology, the company that delivers the most innovative experience will become the global business leader,” said Koh. “I believe that Samsung will lead the way by spearheading 5G, AI and IoT innovation.”

The first keynote of the day was delivered by Prof. Noah Smith of the University of Washington. Prof. Smith, who is recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts in designing data-centered algorithms for the autonomous analysis of human languages, introduced rational recurrent neural networks (RNNs), and outlined a path toward more efficient deep learning models for language processing.

“Current deep learning models are not based on real language understanding,” Prof. Smith explained. “Therefore, it is hard to explain the reasoning behind their actions. Experiments have found that rational RNNs can perform competitively as language models and for various classification tasks, especially with smaller amounts of annotated data, while using fewer parameters and training faster.”

Next, Prof. Abhinav Gupta of Carnegie Mellon University suggested a new model for empowering vision and robot learning. Prof. Gupta demonstrated how this large-scale self-learning mechanism goes beyond the limitations of supervised learning¹, and discussed how to incorporate it into future AI agents.

The self-learning model introduced by Prof. Gupta is a methodology in which an AI system models the physical world through visual understanding, and gains an understanding of space and objects. The goal is to establish predictive models based on knowledge of physics, spatial perception and cause-and-effect relationships.

The ‘Invited Talk’ session that followed Prof. Gupta’s presentation discussed concrete methods for extending AI into more areas of our daily lives.

“It’s difficult for AI to make sense of the world using only the data that it’s been trained with, and when variables are involved, the data can produce a conclusion that’s completely different from what the developer intended,” said Prof. Vaishak Belle of Scotland’s University of Edinburgh.

Prof. Belle stressed the need for transparent and responsible AI development, and suggested that more efforts be directed toward 1) developing machine learning technology that’s accessible even to non-AI experts, 2) understanding biases in algorithms to ensure fair decision making, and 3) applying ethical principles to AI systems. The approaches he suggested were based on symbolic logic as it pertains to machine learning development.

Next, Prof. Joan Bruna of New York University introduced recent advancements in the development of deep learning models known as graph neural networks (GNNs). “A graph is an effective tool for integrating interactions involving users, devices and knowledge,” Prof. Bruna explained. “GNNs, which can represent graphs and learn and reason about relations are key for developing AI that’s capable of human-level intelligence.”

The sessions that followed were divided into two themes: ‘Vision & Image’ and ‘On-Device, IoT & Social.’ Both tracks featured fascinating presentations, delivered by a who’s who of AI experts, along with engaging discussions focused on AI technology and its applications.

Showcasing Samsung’s Latest AI Advancements

(Above) Dr. Sungwoo Hwang, Deputy President of the SAIT, offers a demonstration of Samsung’s on-device AI translation technology. (Below) Participants examine outstanding examples of AI research conducted by undergraduate and graduate students from across Korea.

Each Samsung AI Forum offers attendees an opportunity to examine Samsung’s latest advancements in the field of AI research. This year, the company used the forum as a stage to unveil on-device AI translation technology that provides users with fast, reliable service even without an internet connection.

The forum also served as a showcase for the next generation of AI experts. Posters set up outside of the lecture hall offered attendees a chance to examine the research and dissertations of students in undergraduate and graduate schools across Korea.

Samsung’s vision for AI technology is focused on creating a user-centric ecosystem of devices and services that enhance users’ lives in meaningful ways. In hosting this event, the company hopes to do more than simply showcase the latest advancements in AI research, but actively seek innovative solutions to some of the technology’s most pressing challenges.

¹ Supervised learning refers to a machine learning method that gathers meaningful information based only on learned data. Because rules can be created once a large amount of data has been collected, the larger the scale of the self-learning is, the more sophisticated the conclusion becomes.

Samsung Electronics last month announced its goal to strengthen its leadership in the global system semiconductor industry by 2030 through expanding its proprietary NPU technology development. The company recently delivered an update to this goal at the conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), one of the top academic conferences in computer vision fields.

This update is the company’s development of its On-Device AI lightweight algorithm, introduced at CVPR with a paper titled “Learning to Quantize Deep Networks by Optimizing Quantization Intervals With Task Loss”. On-Device AI technologies directly compute and process data from within the device itself. Over 4 times lighter and 8 times faster than existing algorithms, Samsung’s latest algorithm solution is dramatically improved from previous solutions and has been evaluated to be key to solving potential issues for low-power, high-speed computations.

Streamlining the Deep Learning Process

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) has announced that they have successfully developed On-Device AI lightweight technology that performs computations 8 times faster than the existing 32-bit deep learning data for servers. By adjusting the data into groups of under 4 bits while maintaining accurate data recognition, this method of deep learning algorithm processing is simultaneously much faster and much more energy efficient than existing solutions.

Samsung’s new On-Device AI processing technology determines the intervals of the significant data that influence overall deep learning performance through ‘learning’. This ‘Quantization¹ Interval Learning (QIL)’ retains data accuracy by re-organizing the data to be presented in bits smaller than their existing size. SAIT ran experiments that successfully demonstrated how the quantization of an in-server deep learning algorithm in 32 bit intervals provided higher accuracy than other existing solutions when computed into levels of less than 4 bits.

When the data of a deep learning computation is presented in bit groups lower than 4 bits, computations of ‘and’ and ‘or’ are allowed, on top of the simpler arithmetic calculations of addition and multiplication. This means that the computation results using the QIL process can achieve the same results as existing processes can while using 1/40 to 1/120 fewer transistors².

As this system therefore requires less hardware and less electricity, it can be mounted directly in-device at the place where the data for an image or fingerprint sensor is being obtained, ahead of transmitting the processed data on to the necessary end points.

The Future of AI Processing and Deep Learning

This technology will help develop Samsung’s system semiconductor capacity as well as strengthening one of the core technologies of the AI era – On-Device AI processing. Differing from AI services that use cloud servers, On-Device AI technologies directly compute data all from within the device itself.

On-Device AI technology can reduce the cost of cloud construction for AI operations since it operates on its own and provides quick and stable performance for use cases such as virtual reality and autonomous driving. Furthermore, On-Device AI technology can save personal biometric information used for device authentication, such as fingerprint, iris and face scans, onto mobile devices safely.

“Ultimately, in the future we will live in a world where all devices and sensor-based technologies are powered by AI,” noted Chang-Kyu Choi, Vice President and head of Computer Vision Lab of SAIT. “Samsung’s On-Device AI technologies are lower-power, higher-speed solutions for deep learning that will pave the way to this future. They are set to expand the memory, processor and sensor market, as well as other next-generation system semiconductor markets.”

A core feature of On-Device AI technology is its ability to compute large amounts of data at a high speed without consuming excessive amounts of electricity. Samsung’s first solution to this end was the Exynos 9 (9820), introduced last year, which featured a proprietary Samsung NPU inside the mobile System on Chip (SoC). This product allows mobile devices to perform AI computations independent of any external cloud server.

Many companies are turning their attention to On-Device AI technology. Samsung Electronics plans to enhance and extend its AI technology leadership by applying this algorithm not only to mobile SoC, but also to memory and sensor solutions in the near future.

Four individuals who played key roles in developing Samsung’s On-Device AI Lightweight Algorithm. From Left to right; Jae-Joon Han, Chang-Young Son, Sang-Il Jung, Chang-Kyu Choi of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology

1 Quantization is the process of decreasing the number of bits in data by binning the given data into sections of limited number levels, which can be represented in certain bit values and are regarded as having the same value per section

² Transistors are devices that control the flow of current or voltage in a semiconductor by acting as amplifiers or switches

The AI Lab is located in Mila – Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms – in Montreal, Canada. Founded by Professor Yoshua Bengio at the University of Montreal, Mila is one of the greatest research centers in the field of deep learning and has a partnership with the University of Montreal and McGill University. SAIT AI Lab Montreal has an open workspace with the aim of working closely with the AI research communities in Mila.

SAIT AI Lab Montreal will focus on unsupervised learning and Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) research to develop disruptive innovation and breakthrough technologies, including new deep learning algorithms and next generation of on-device AI.

To drive the effort, this AI Lab has actively recruited leaders in deep learning research, including Simon Lacoste-Julien, Professor at the University of Montreal, who recently joined as the leader of the lab. In addition, Samsung is planning to dispatch R&D personnel in its Device Solutions Business to Montreal over time and utilize AI Labs as a base for training AI researchers and collaborating with other advanced AI research institutes.

On the other side, SAIT AI Lab Montreal continues to build a strong relationship with Yoshua Bengio, one of the world’s greatest experts on deep learning, machine learning, and AI. SAIT and Professor Bengio collaborated on deep learning algorithm research since 2014, successfully publishing three papers on academic journals.

Professor Yoshua Bengio said, “Samsung’s collaboration with Mila is well established already and has been productive and built strong trust on both sides. With a new SAIT lab in the midst of the recently inaugurated Mila building and many exciting research challenges ahead of us in AI, I expect even more mutually positive outcomes in the future.”

SAIT has actively pursued research collaboration with other top authorities in the field. In addition to Professor Bengio, SAIT has worked with Yann LeCun, Professor at New York University and Richard Zemel, Professor at University of Toronto. Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun, along with computer scientist Geoffrey Everest Hinton won the 2018 Turing Award which is deemed the ‘Nobel Prize in computer science.’

“SAIT focuses on research and development – not only in next generation semiconductor but also innovative AI as a seed technology in system semiconductors. SAIT AI Lab Montreal will play a key role within Samsung to redefine AI theory and deep learning algorithm for the next 10 years,” said Sungwoo Hwang, Executive Vice President and Deputy Head of SAIT.

Exploring Next Generation Battery Technology

Lithium-ion batteries were first commercialized in 1991, and widely applied to markets for mobile devices and electric vehicles. However, with standard lithium batteries requiring charging times of at least an hour to fully charge, even with quick charging technology, and considered to have reached their limit for capacity expansion, there have been numerous attempts to explore use of new innovative materials. Among the materials looked at, graphene has widely become the primary source of interest as the representative next generation material.

In theory, a battery based on the “graphene ball” material requires only 12 minutes to fully charge. Additionally, the battery can maintain a highly stable 60 degree Celsius temperature, with stable battery temperatures particularly key for electric vehicles.

In its research, SAIT sought for an approach to apply graphene, a material with high strength and conductivity to batteries, and discovered a mechanism to mass synthesize graphene into a 3D form like popcorn using affordable silica (SiO2). This “graphene ball” was utilized for both the anode protective layer and cathode materials in lithium-ion batteries. This ensured an increase of charging capacity, decrease of charging time as well as stable temperatures.

Dr. Son In-hyuk, who led the project on behalf of SAIT, said, “Our research enables mass synthesis of multifunctional composite material graphene at an affordable price. At the same time, we were able to considerably enhance the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries in an environment where the markets for mobile devices and electric vehicles is growing rapidly. Our commitment is to continuously explore and develop secondary battery technology in light of these trends.”

SAIT’s research results are covered in-depth in this month’s edition of the science journal Nature Communications in an article entitled, “Graphene balls for lithium rechargeable batteries with fast charging and high volumetric energy densities.” SAIT has also filed two applications for the “graphene ball” technology patent in the US and Korea.

*Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms from graphite, and is receiving much attention in the battery and display industry due to its physical, chemical stability. Graphene is 100 times more effective than copper in conducting electricity and displays remarkable electron mobility – 140 times faster than silicon – which makes it an ideal material for fast charge.

The research findings were published in the October 4, 2017 edition of the scientific journal Nature in an article entitled “Printable organometallic perovskite enables large-area, low-dose X-ray imaging”

Researchers at SAIT developed a perovskite semi-conductor material that, in addition to being significantly lower in radiation, is 20 times higher in sensitivity for X-rays, as well as cheaper in price compared to conventional flat panel detectors. Additionally, while conventional detectors processed with a vacuum deposition process, the technology used to make thin films of semi-conductors, do not allow extension to a large area due to technical limitations, the new material allows enlargement as required through a solution-based process such as printing or bar coating. Commercialization of this technology offers the potential for producing low-dose X-ray detectors that can scan the whole body at once.

“In order to apply perovskite onto X-ray photons, which are highly penetrable, the material must be 1,000 times thicker than that of a solar cell, while being able to retain electric signals for a sufficiently long enough time converted from X-ray,” said InTaek Han, Vice President of SAIT. “The new method of synthesis developed from the research is a key breakthrough for the field.”

*Perovskite: This crystal structured mineral is named after the Russian scientist Lev Perovski. Developers of solar cells and X-ray equipment are highly interested in the material due to its excellent photoelectric efficiency, which transfers light into electrical current.

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (hereinafter referred to as “SAIT”) established AI Lab on August 17 (local time) at University of Montreal, Canada. The AI Lab will be used to strengthen collaborative research with world-leading scholars in the AI ​​field.

SAIT has been collaborating with Professor Yoshua Bengio of University of Montreal, the world’s top authority on deep learning, machine learning and artificial intelligence, since 2014, with other partners in University of Toronto, McGill University and NYU.

“There is a long-standing and fruitful research collaboration between us and Samsung and we are glad to see Samsung open a research lab here and join the amazing momentum which is turning Montreal into an international hub for AI, both academically and industrially,” commented Prof. Bengio regarding this event.

In this Samsung AI Lab, the researchers dispatched from Korea work with local professors and students including Prof. Bengio to develop key algorithms and components for artificial intelligence such as voice/image recognition, translation, autonomous driving, and robots. It will also contribute to acquiring global talents and strengthening Samsung’s AI technology.

Eunsoo Shim, VP and Head of S/W Solution Lab at SAIT, said, “The joint research with Professor Bengio has been a foundation for the development of artificial intelligence in Samsung Electronics, and Samsung AI Lab will be a momentous step for us to leap forward.”

In addition, he added that SAIT plans to establish and operate a “Neural Processing Research Center” with local universities such as Seoul National University during the year to accelerate its research in the field of AI ​​processor.