South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT has created a forum to share results from the development of domestic artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors and discuss future growth strategies.

The ministry held the K-AI Semiconductor Growth Forum on June 4 at the Crystal Ballroom of the Lotte Hotel in Sogong-dong, Seoul. About 300 people attended, including Deputy Prime Minister and Science and ICT Minister Kyung-hoon Bae (배경훈), as well as representatives from the National Assembly, related agencies, associations and groups, AI semiconductor companies and cloud, software and AI service companies.

According to the ministry, domestic AI semiconductors are a key foundation for becoming one of the world's three leading AI powers and for realising an independent AI. The government has supported efforts to secure technological competitiveness through research and development and pilot support. Domestic AI semiconductors entered the commercialisation stage from this year. Recently, they achieved results including signing export contracts worth more than $30 million in overseas markets such as the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Vietnam and China.

The forum presented best-practice cases that have been built and operated at worksites through the government's AI semiconductor pilot programme. They included a smart livestock AX poultry-management robot-based unmanned autonomous farm (RobotwareAI and Mobilint), an ocean surveillance surface drone and wildfire management platform (Busan IT Industry Promotion Agency and FuriosaAI), and a CCTV and drone-based disaster-safety AI control solution for wildfire surveillance in the Hadong and Sancheong areas (Gyeongnam Technopark and Mobilint).

The forum also shared cases that led from the pilot programme to overseas exports. Best cases introduced as having led to actual export contracts based on the pilot programme included a wheelchair platform supporting mobility for transportation-vulnerable users jointly developed with the West Midlands in the UK (LBS Tech and Dinotisia), and a real-time surface pollution source detection and autonomous purification water-quality management monitoring service developed in cooperation with an energy company in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (Ecopes and Rebellion).

Domestic AI semiconductor companies presented their representative cases linked to actual commercial services. They included SK Telecom's A.dot call-summary service (Rebellion), Samsung SDS' subscription-based AI semiconductor service (NPUaaS) (FuriosaAI), a public-complaint analysis service based on a civil-complaint-specialised large language model (LLM) (Hyperexcel), Hyundai Motor Group's next-generation robotics platform (DeepX), and Meta M's AI call-centre consulting service (Mobilint).

The forum also unveiled the status and future plans for K-Perf, a performance metric for domestic AI semiconductors. K-Perf is a performance measurement index intended to objectively provide performance data needed by customer companies to adopt domestic AI semiconductors. On Dec. 15 last year, 15 demand and supply organisations participated and announced performance measurement models, conditions and metrics focused on real-world usage environments.

The ministry, the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) and the Institute of Information and Communications Technology Planning and Evaluation (IITP) conducted K-Perf testing and verification on FuriosaAI's Renegade and Rebellion's Rebel-100. The test results showed that both products met performance standards required by customer companies under various conditions including model size, input and output size, and scale of concurrent use.

The government will expand performance standards to cover on-device AI semiconductors as well as server-type products, and will pursue efforts including enhancing the testing system and providing a K-Perf-based testbed. It will also open a K-AI Semiconductor Technical Support Center in the first half to expand private-sector adoption of domestic AI semiconductors. It plans to support K-AI full-stack pilots combining hardware, software and AI services.

Deputy Prime Minister and Science and ICT Minister Bae said domestic AI semiconductors are a key foundation for implementing the national task of becoming one of the world's three leading AI powers and for completing an independent AI. The government will act as a catalyst and provide active support so the sector can deliver tangible results beyond full-scale mass production and commercialisation, he said.