Semifive said on Feb. 19 it has signed a contract to win a turnkey project with U.S. fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) hardware platform company Niobium to develop an FHE accelerator. The contract is worth about 10 billion won ($6.86 million). Semifive will provide an end-to-end ASIC solution from design to packaging and testing.

The accelerator will be developed based on Samsung Foundry’s 8-nanometre process. It implements in hardware FHE technology that can compute on encrypted data without decrypting it. Niobium plans to implement it at practical speeds in cloud and AI infrastructure environments.

Niobium’s FHE accelerator aims to improve performance and efficiency compared with software-based encryption methods. FHE is considered one of the most complex technologies in encrypted computing. It is an element of next-generation data protection architectures such as private cloud, zero trust computing and private AI.

Kevin Yoder (케빈 요더), CEO of Niobium, said, "Once companies can process encrypted data fast enough, handling sensitive information in an unencrypted state will no longer be allowed." He added, "Through cooperation with Semifive and Samsung Foundry, we are at the stage of implementing the R&D成果 accumulated so far as a mass-producible semiconductor for encrypted cloud and AI environments."

Semifive said it plans to use the project to strengthen its position as a core design partner for global innovative companies in advanced ASICs.

Semifive CEO Myung-hyun Cho (조명현) said, "Niobium is a company at the forefront of encrypted computing, and its FHE accelerator platform is one of the key next-generation architectures in privacy-centric computing." He added, "We are pleased to be able to contribute to implementing Niobium’s state-of-the-art FHE innovative technology as a mass-producible semiconductor based on Semifive’s proven SoC platform-based development capabilities and execution."