Baidu announces its KUNLUN AI training chip, manufactured by Samsung, marking China's entry into custom AI accelerator design.

Baidu, a Chinese language internet search provider, has partnered with Samsung Electronics to produce Baidu KUNLUN, the company's first cloud-to-edge AI accelerator chip. Designed to power large-scale AI workloads including search ranking, speech recognition, image processing, natural language processing, autonomous driving, and deep learning platforms, the chip represents one of Baidu's first foundry collaborations. The Baidu KUNLUN is built using Samsung's home-grown neural processor architecture called XPU on 14nm process technology.

The chip leverages Samsung's I-Cube (Interposer-Cube) package solution to deliver advanced performance characteristics. It supports up to 512 GBps memory bandwidth and supplies up to 260 tera operations per second at 150 watts, enabling efficient processing of demanding AI workloads at scale.

In testing, the Baidu KUNLUN demonstrated significant performance advantages, proving to be three times quicker than conventional GPU/FPGA-accelerating models in processing natural language processing tasks.

OuYang Jian, Distinguished Architect of Baidu, commented: "We are excited to lead the HPC industry together with Samsung Foundry. Baidu KUNLUN is a very challenging project since it requires not only a high level of reliability and performance at the same time, but is also a compilation of the most advanced technologies in the semiconductor industry. Thanks to Samsung's state of the art process technologies and competent foundry services, we were able to meet and surpass our goal to offer superior AI user experience."

Ryan Lee, vice president of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics, stated: "We are excited to start a new foundry service for Baidu using our 14nm process technology. Baidu KUNLUN is an important milestone for Samsung Foundry as we're expanding our business area beyond mobile to datacenter applications by developing and mass-producing AI chips. Samsung will provide comprehensive foundry solutions from design support to cutting-edge manufacturing technologies, such as 5LPE, 4LPE, as well as 2.5D packaging."