SKC's glass substrate is displayed inside SK Group's booth, set up at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Jan. 7-10. (SKC)
SKC's glass substrate is displayed inside SK Group's booth, set up at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, Jan. 7-10. (SKC)

Korean tech giants Samsung, LG and SK are ramping up competition to gain an early lead in glass substrates for chipmaking, a next-generation technology anticipated to significantly enhance chip performance, with top executives signaling their entry into the burgeoning market.

At this year’s CES, the world’s largest tech show annually held in Las Vegas, SK Group Chair Chey Tae-won revealed he had “just sold” glass substrates of SKC, the advanced materials arm of the conglomerate producing the cutting-edge chip component.

“I just sold this (to a client),” Chey said, standing in front of the glass substrate exhibited at SK Group’s booth set up for the CES 2025 event, held from Jan. 7-10.

His remark, following a meeting with Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, led SKC -- the glass substrate-maker affiliated to SK Group -- to soar in early trading on Jan. 9, fueling speculations that it may supply glass substrates for the world’s top GPU-maker.

Glass substrates are thin layers of glass on which processing and memory chips can be mounted together to create the brains of a computing system. According to industry officials, glass reduces the space required for a multichip package, allowing more chips to be packaged into a single device. This design helps improve chip processing speed by 40 percent, while reducing power consumption by 30 percent.

Glass substrates, which offer great advantages but are harder to make, are expected to replace traditional plastic versions once companies achieve mass production with viable yield rates.

Intel, AMD and Broadcom have announced plans to adopt glass substrates for their next-generation chips and Nvidia’s entry could further drive the growth of the advanced component technology, which is still in its early stages.

SKC, which displayed the actual glass substrate product at the global tech show, entered the business in 2021 and established a subsidiary, Absolics. Absolics then became the world’s first to construct a factory to mass produce the glass substrates in Georgia, securing a federal subsidy of $75 million from the Commerce Department under the US CHIPS and Science Act.

“We aim to solidify our technological edge in the increasingly competitive chip market through glass substrates,” SKC said.

LG Innotek, the electronics parts unit under LG Group, also announced it would start pilot production of glass substrates by the end of this year.

“In two to three years, glass substrates will start to be adopted in communication semiconductors. In about five years, they will become the mainstream products for high-performance server applications,” LG Innotek CEO Moon Hyuk-soo said at a press conference on the sidelines of CES 2025 in Las Vegas on Jan. 8.

“Glass substrates are the direction we should take, and many big techs are currently weighing the timing for mass production. LG Innotek is also preparing to make sure it is does not fall behind.”

Samsung Electro-Mechanics CEO Chang Duk-hyun did not miss the opportunity to unveil the company’s ambition to grow its glass strates business at the Las Vegas tech show.

“We are delivering samples to two to three clients this year, and plan to start mass production after 2027,” Chang said in a press conference Jan. 8.

Chang said the company has established a pilot line at its manufacturing plant in Sejong.

By Jo He-rim (herim@heraldcorp.com)