Samsung, Ambarella expand partnership in digital camera chips

Samsung Electronics Co. said Wednesday that it began to supply digital camera chips for Ambarella Inc., an image-processing semiconductor company in the U.S., further expanding their cooperation in the foundry business.

Samsung’s foundry team started manufacturing Ambarella’s 32-nanometer System on Chips and A7L for high-definition digital cameras, Samsung said in a statement.

The company’s foundry business, which fabricates chip designs of other companies that do not have a semiconductor fabrication plant, counts companies like Apple Inc. as its customers.

Ambarella’s chips are built using Samsung’s high-k metal gate technology, the Korean firm said, which helps reduce electricity leaks in the manufacturing process.

The latest collaboration between Samsung and Ambarella is the second in a series since they began in November of last year to produce 45-nanometer chips.

The joint effort is expected to help create low-power chips, according to the two companies.

“Samsung Foundry’s process technology, combined with the Cadence digital flow, enabled us to hit our aggressive performance targets while achieving 95 percent power savings during power shutoff mode and 60 percent average power savings over operation and sleep modes,” Chan Lee, Ambarella’s vice president, said in a statement.

Foundry business is seen as one of Samsung’s future growth engines. Market research firm IHS iSuppli said that the foundry market is expected to grow 8.5 percent annually to $49.2 billion in 2015, from $32.7 billion last year. 

(Yonhap News)