Recently, a report from South Korean media outlet BusinessKorea has indicated that the South Korean government is actively advancing new research and development (R&D) projects, including the development of AI chips for autonomous vehicles, with the aim of surpassing the American semiconductor giant NVIDIA.
The report stated that on May 2nd, the South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy announced that the“Second Strategic Planning and Investment Council,” comprising of representatives from research institutes, universities, etc, approved 62 new R&D projects for 2025, including flagship projects and roadmaps in over 11 domains.
The council prioritizes investments in high-end strategic industries to achieve technological sovereignty and breakthrough growth, while also increasing funding for innovative research that undertakes the risk of failure. It ceases subsidies to individual companies and instead focuses on investments centered around core technologies shared across industries, such as artificial intelligence and compliance with global environmental regulations.
Following this investment strategy, the review council has selected 62 projects. Among them, 12 flagship projects are designed to be world-first and best-in-class, aiming to seize the opportunity of next-generation technologies.
In line with this, the review council plans to develop a universal, open next-generation artificial intelligence chip for Software-Defined Vehicles (SDVs), with a processing speed of up to 10 trillion operations per second (TOPS).
Currently, NVIDIA is advancing the development and commercialization of its next-generation autonomous driving chip rated at 1,000 TOPS. Meanwhile, South Korea is developing autonomous driving chips with performance ranging from tens to 300 TOPS.
The Ministry’s goal is to develop the world’s first commercially viable high-speed autonomous driving vehicle network system and a core semiconductor with a processing speed of 10 gigabits per second (Gbps), enabling full Level 4 and above autonomous driving.
