The Ministry of Science and ICT has teamed up with U.S. chip giant AMD to set up an artificial intelligence (AI) research center in Korea, as well as expanding infrastructure for heterogeneous AI computing.

According to the ministry, Monday, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyung-hoon and AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on bilateral cooperation in the AI semiconductor ecosystem during AMD Advancing AI 2026 in San Francisco, Thursday.

Under the MOU, AMD will begin preparations to establish an “AI Center of Excellence” in Korea, which will serve as a collaboration hub supporting technology cooperation among Korean companies, universities and research institutes, AI semiconductor software development, computing technology validation and joint research based on AMD's computing resources and software capabilities.

The two sides also agreed to pursue the development and demonstration of a heterogeneous AI computing infrastructure combining AMD's central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) with domestically developed neural processing units (NPUs).

Heterogeneous computing refers to an infrastructure technology that combines various logic chips, such as CPUs, GPUs and NPUs, in an optimal mix based on the characteristics of each workload, rather than relying on a single chip.

The global AI semiconductor market is increasingly shifting toward heterogeneous computing due to rising AI inference demand, resulting in service providers to combine different chips according to service requirements and cost efficiency.

Through the partnership, the two sides will create a computing environment that efficiently utilizes diverse computing resources tailored to the characteristics of different AI services, while fostering an open AI computing ecosystem involving not only AI semiconductor companies but also Korean firms specializing in memory, data processing units, compute express link and orchestration software.

"The global AI competition is increasingly shifting toward heterogeneous computing and open ecosystems," Bae said.

"Through our partnership with AMD, we expect to strengthen the competitiveness of Korea's AI semiconductor ecosystem and create a new model for collaboration in responding to changes in the global AI computing infrastructure."

Su said that Korea stands as AMD’s key strategic market and the company will work with the ministry to actively support the country’s ambition to build an a open, heterogeneous AI infrastructure.