Fabless startup Sapeon to develop on-device AI chip
South Korea's Sapeon, a spin off from telco SK Group, has announced it is working on a new semiconductor optimised for on-device artificial intelligence.
The company said it is partnering with the state-run government research institute Korea Planning & Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology on the project. The plan is to deliver chip designs to the embedded computing firm Advantech Korea and then to target customers that make connected edge devices.
Sapeon began life as a division within SK, which launched an AI chip named SAPEON X220 in 2020. It was designed to process artificial intelligence tasks faster, using less power by efficiently processing large amounts of data in parallel.
Last November, Sapeon launched its latest chip for data centres, joining the global race to develop AI chips with bigger rivals like Nvidia. Its Sapeon X330 chip supports large language models (LLMs), and is set for mass production in the coming weeks.
