Samsung Electronics hires a former vice president of Qualcomm to drive the automotive chip business

CTOnews.com, Feb. 7, according to Businesskorea, at the end of last year, Samsung Electronics hired Benny Katibian, a former vice president of engineering at Qualcomm, as senior vice president of its American company. After taking office, Katibian served as the head of Samsung Austin Research Center (SARC) and Advanced Computing Lab (ACL), the core R & D center of Samsung Electronics USA.

CTOnews.com learned that Katibian is an expert in self-driving semiconductors. He worked at Qualcomm in charge of developing self-driving systems such as Advanced driving Assistance system (ADAS), and later served as chief operating officer of Xiaopeng Automobile North America, a Chinese electric car company, and planned the development of its self-driving chip.

It is reported that the recruitment is part of Samsung Electronics' efforts to expand its automotive system chip (SoC) business, which has great growth potential. Samsung Electronics' system LSI division has launched Exynos Auto, a car processor based on artificial intelligence (AI). Samsung's primary goal now is to upgrade Exynos Auto to strengthen its market dominance.

Exynos Auto is being supplied to major European automakers such as Volkswagen and Audi. At the request of BMW, Samsung also provided the latter with an automotive semiconductor prototype.