Samsung Electronics: Revolutionizing the Road Ahead

Aligning automotive innovations from all of its semiconductor business units for the first time, Samsung Electronics underscores the symbiotic potential among its diverse offerings across memory, system LSI, foundry and LED technologies. This unification solidifies Samsung’s leading position as an all-encompassing mobility solutions provider.

“IAA MOBILITY 2023 serves as an unparalleled platform for us to demonstrate the collective strength and commitment of our individual businesses, built to revolutionize the automotive industry through our expansive suite of semiconductor technologies,” said Dermot Ryan, President of Device Solutions Europe, Samsung Electronics. “Our shared vision is to collaboratively craft safer, more sustainable and profoundly interconnected automotive experiences for customers and communities worldwide.”

Pioneering Memory Advancements for Future Mobility

With future vehicles demanding advanced computing and storage capabilities, Samsung’s proven memory technologies emerge as a mainstay in accelerating data-driven mobility. At IAA MOBILITY 2023, Samsung will highlight its full lineup of memory solutions finely tuned for forthcoming automotive applications. These include LPDDR5X,² GDDR7,³ AutoSSD and UFS 3.1⁴ products that offer high-performance and high-capacity in areas such as infotainment and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) — all with certified auto-grade reliability. Building upon its robust automotive portfolio and extensive ecosystem partnerships, Samsung aims to become the largest automotive memory provider by 2025, empowering global customers to achieve fully connected mobility experiences.

Elevating the In-Car Experience With System LSI Innovations

As the automotive landscape shifts toward electrification and digitalization, in-car entertainment and safety ascend as defining attributes of next-generation vehicles. During IAA MOBILITY 2023, Samsung will present a tailored processor and sensor portfolio designed to address these evolving demands. Samsung’s Exynos Auto V920 processor, optimized for premium in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems, enables smooth playback of graphics-rich videos and games on multiple displays. Meanwhile, Samsung’s ISOCELL Auto sensors provide an exhaustive 360-degree car vision from front- (ISOCELL Auto 1H1) to rear- and surround-views (ISOCELL Auto 4AC), ensuring safety for both drivers and passengers. Extending safety features to the car interior, Samsung will demonstrate in-cabin sensor technologies primed for driver and occupant monitoring systems, capable of detecting and alerting potentially unsafe driver conditions like drowsiness, fatigue and distraction.

Advancing Automotive Semiconductor Frontiers With Foundry Solutions

In tune with the burgeoning automotive semiconductor market, Samsung’s Foundry Business has strategically honed its focus on automotive innovation and manufacturing excellence. At IAA MOBILITY 2023, the company will present its latest automotive design solutions, spanning system-on-chips (SoCs) for IVI and ADAS, power management ICs⁵ (PMICs) and battery management ICs (BMICs) as well as automotive microcontrollers (MCUs), all featuring the latest of Samsung Foundry’s technologies. Samsung will also highlight its automotive process technology roadmap, targeting mass production readiness of its four-nanometer (nm) process (SF4A⁶) by 2025 and its 2nm process (SF2A⁷) by 2026. Augmenting this initiative, Samsung Foundry is fortifying its intellectual property (IP) portfolio across analog, memory interface, high-speed interface, security and die to die (D2D) as well as bolstering its design infrastructure.

Next-Gen LED Technologies for the Vehicles of Tomorrow

Samsung will also display its advanced and highly customizable LED lighting solutions ideal for future electric and autonomous vehicles. The company’s PixCell LED⁸ represents an intelligent adaptive driving beam (ADB) innovation that empowers car manufacturers to create smaller lamps with precise and selective lighting control. Achieving Full HD resolution on a compact 0.25-inch display, Samsung’s next-gen Micro LED technology is ideally suited for ultra-high-resolution head-up displays (HUDs) while enabling driver information viewing through augmented reality (AR) glasses. Its Mini LED technology, an evolutionary vehicle-to-everything (V2X) solution, will unlock intricate animated signal effects, enhancing communication with other vehicles and pedestrians.

Samsung Display: OLEDs To Enhance the Automobile Experience

Samsung Display is exhibiting at IAA Mobility 2023, making its debut at an auto show for the first time ever, highlighting its display leadership with a unique exhibition that allows visitors to experience the many advantages of OLED technology. This ties in with the company’s intention to become a leading provider of OLED displays on next-generation automobile applications as the industry transitions away from LCDs.

Visitors to the Samsung Display booth will be able to experience the Safe Driving Center, where they can compare the difference between OLEDs and LCDs. Participants will discover that because OLEDs can portray True Black (Certified by VESA), they can significantly enhance driver visibility — and therefore safety — in dark environments.

The booth will also showcase OLEDs’ low power consumption, owing to OLED displays only lighting up pixels where the actual color appears, unlike LCDs. Of course, this characteristic is becoming ever more important in a world where electric vehicles (EVs) continue to grow in popularity. Additionally, visitors can explore how OLED technology enhances the interior of the vehicle. Since OLEDs can be bent and curved to match the car’s interior, and are lighter and thinner than LCDs, they allow for much greater design flexibility.

In the Next Mobility Projects space, visitors can get a glimpse of future OLED displays in a variety of form factors, such as the Flex S, a multi-foldable display that folds into an S shape with one side of the device inward and the other outward. It can be carried like a smartphone, but then expanded to 12.4 inches and used as the car dashboard. Other innovative products on display include a rollable display that expands more than five times on the vertical axis for rear seat entertainment (RSE) systems in the backseat, as well as a slidable display that expands the screen on both sides.

Samsung SDI: Cutting-Edge Battery Solutions for Next-Gen Electric Vehicles

Samsung SDI is making its sixth IAA appearance at IAA MOBILITY 2023, and the battery maker is poised to unveil “super gap”⁹ battery solutions for future EVs. The company is also making engagement with top R&D talent from Europe a priority.

Visitors to Samsung SDI’s booth will have a chance to see the company’s technological highlights in the PRiMX¹⁰ Zone, with the theme of “PRiMX, Experience the Best.” The zone will showcase a next-generation lineup of products including the all-solid-state battery, 46-phi cylindrical battery, nickel manganese (NMX) battery and lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP) battery, along with premium-segment solutions. In the ESG¹¹ Zone, Samsung SDI will present the company’s ongoing initiatives for a sustainable future under the long-term vision of “To make the world sustainable through our innovative technology.”

To cater to varying needs for mass-market electric cars, Samsung SDI is also unveiling cobalt-free battery solutions like NMX and LMFP as a strategic edge ensuring both safety and cost-effectiveness. Also on display is a new form factor, where cathode and anode terminals are re-positioned to the side, enabling maximum space efficiency and enhanced performance and safety.

In attendance at IAA MOBILITY 2023 will be Samsung SDI President and CEO Yoon-ho Choi, who will meet with major European customers. Choi will also make an appearance at the Tech & Career (T&C) Forum, SDI’s career fair that introduces its technological prowess to the industry and allows the company to engage with prospective employees. The Forum is being held in Munich for the first time, after being held in Seoul last month. It took place twice in Seoul and New York last year.

“Home to global automotive industry players, including both carmakers and parts makers, Europe is a crucial market that will lead the future EV industry,” said Choi. “Using our unrivaled technologies, we will continually strive to provide our key European customers with products that feature the highest levels of safety and quality.”

¹ The International Motor Show Germany, or Internationale Automobil-Ausstellung (IAA) in German, is one of the world’s largest mobility trade fairs. It consists of two separate fairs: IAA MOBILITY and IAA TRANSPORTATION. IAA MOBILITY focuses on the latest developments in passenger vehicles, motorcycles and bikes.
² LPDDR5X: Low Power Double Data Rate 5X.
³ GDDR7: Graphics Double Data Rate 7.
⁴ UFS 3.1: Universal Flash Storage 3.1.
⁵ IC: Integrated Circuit.
⁶ SF4A: Samsung Foundry 4nm Automotive.
⁷ SF2A: Samsung Foundry 2nm Automotive.
⁸ The PixCell LED is a super-compact solution that uses sharp precision to deliver enhanced visibility for safer driving at night and in poor weather conditions.
⁹ Super gap: a wide lead that a market leader has over its competitors.
¹⁰ In 2021, Samsung SDI launched the battery brand PRiMX: Prime Battery for Maximum Experience.
¹¹ ESG: Environmental, Social and Governance.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced that it has initiated mass production of its new automotive Universal Flash Storage (UFS) 3.1 memory solution optimized for in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems. The new solution offers the industry’s lowest energy consumption, enabling car manufacturers to provide the best mobility experience for consumers.

The UFS 3.1 lineup will come in 128, 256 and 512-gigabyte (GB) variants to meet different needs of customers. The enhanced lineup allows more efficient battery life management to future automotive applications such as electric or autonomous vehicles. The 256GB model, for instance, has reduced its energy consumption by about 33% compared to the previous generation product. The 256GB model also provides a sequential write speed of 700-megabytes-per-second (MB/s) and a sequential read speed of 2,000MB/s.

“Samsung’s new UFS 3.1 solution addresses a wide range of customer needs for optimized IVI systems while pushing forward with next-generation memory trends that require higher ESG standards,” said Hyunduk Cho, Vice President of Memory Product Planning Team at Samsung Electronics. “We aim to expand our presence in the automotive semiconductor market, following the introduction of our UFS 3.1 solution for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).”

The new automotive UFS 3.1 solution satisfies the requirements of AEC-Q100 Grade2, a semiconductor quality standard for vehicles which guarantees stable performance in a wide range of temperatures from negative 40°C to 105°C.

Samsung plans to supply its UFS 3.1 products to global automakers and parts manufacturers by the end of this year.

As Samsung continues to strengthen its automotive memory solution portfolio, the company received an ASPICE Level 2 certification from customers in April, 2023, with its ADAS-oriented UFS 3.1 product. It obtained ASPICE Level 2 certification from C&BIS, a renowned automobile certification agency, with the UFS 3.1 product for ADAS supplied to customers and received verification for the high stability required in automotive semiconductors this month.

Since Samsung first started its automotive memory business in 2015, it has continued to grow rapidly. In 2017, the company introduced the industry’s first UFS for vehicles and has since been providing various memory solutions such as AutoSSD, Auto LPDDR5X and Auto GDDR6. As data storage and computational demands on the automotive sector continue to grow, the company aims to deliver optimized memory solutions for automotive customers and reinforce its development and quality enhancement efforts to accelerate its market leadership.

“It is exciting to see our environmentally sustainable efforts receiving global acknowledgements,” said Seong-dai Jang, Senior Vice President and Head of DS Corporate Sustainability Management Office at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue our path towards a sustainable future with ‘greener’ chips enabled by Samsung’s cutting-edge technology.”

Five Memory Products Achieve the Carbon Trust ‘Reducing CO2’ Certification

Five Samsung memory products – HBM2E (8GB), GDDR6 (8Gb), UFS 3.1 (512GB), Portable SSD T7 (1TB), microSD EVO Select (128GB) – recently earned ‘Reducing CO2’ labels from the Carbon Trust. The previous versions of the five products had received the ‘CO2 Measured’ certification from the Carbon Trust last year. The Carbon Trust recently also certified the product carbon footprints of 20 memory products¹ by giving them the ‘CO2 Measured’ product carbon footprint label.

The Carbon Trust is an independent and expert partner of organizations that advises businesses on their opportunities in a sustainable, low-carbon world. The Carbon Trust also certifies the environmental footprint of organizations, supply chains and products.

The Reducing CO2 label certifies that a product’s carbon emission has decreased. Samsung was able to cut the carbon emission of the five memory products through enhanced production efficiency. This means that less electricity and raw materials were used per chip. For the Portable SSD T7 (1TB), Samsung used environmentally sustainable paper instead of plastic as packaging material to minimize the carbon footprint of the product.

Samsung estimates that the volume of carbon emissions reduced from the five products, after their release until July 2021, amounts to approximately 680,000 metric tons of CO2, which is equivalent to 11.3 million urban tree seedlings grown for ten years or the greenhouse gas emitted from 149,000 cars driven for one year.

Before a product can be certified for carbon reduction, its current carbon footprint must be validated in order to set the starting line for measuring carbon footprint changes. The CO2 Measured label verifies the current carbon emission of the product with a globally recognized specification (PAS 2050). Thus, the 20 Samsung memory products with the CO2 Measured label has now set the benchmark for future carbon reduction.

“We have certified five of Samsung’s memory chip products with the CO2 Reducing label, and are pleased to bring on board 20 more products with the CO2 Measured label,” said Hugh Jones, Managing Director at the Carbon Trust Advisory. “We hope that Samsung’s efforts could spread out to the entire semiconductor industry, so that the industry can continue its journey towards a more sustainable future.”

Carbon Footprint of C-series 3W Automotive LEDs Verified by UL

Four C-series 3W Automotive LED packages manufactured by Samsung – Gen3 (third generation) 3W White, Gen3 3W Amber, Gen2 (second generation) 3W White and Gen2 3W Amber – received verification of their carbon footprint to ISO 14064-3 by UL.

UL, the global safety science leader, provides testing, inspection and certification, advisory and risk management services, decision-making tools, training and business intelligence offerings to help customers based in more than 100 countries solve critical business challenges, achieve sustainability goals and prepare for future opportunities.

Since Samsung’s C-series 3W Automotive LED packages are energy efficient products that draw less power but produces more light output, they reduce carbon emissions of cars by improving energy efficiency and ensure longer driving range for electric vehicles in a single charge.

“UL congratulates Samsung for pursuing carbon footprint verification for their four C-series 3W Automotive LED packages, which will help automotive manufacturers select products with transparent, verified information about their environmental footprint,” said Doug Lockard, Vice President and General Manager of UL’s Retail and Consumer Products group. “By understanding the carbon impact of products, manufacturers like Samsung can work to reduce those impacts and improve the environmental performance of products over time.”

¹ SODIMM (8GB/16GB), LPDDR5 (8GB/12GB/16GB), RDIMM (16GB/32GB), 980 PRO SSD (250GB/500GB/1TB/2TB), HBM2E (16GB), GDDR6 (16Gb), UFS 3.1 (128GB/256GB), microSD EVO Select (64GB/256GB/512GB), Portable SSD T7 (500GB/2TB)