Samsung Electronics granted company shares worth 481.39 million won as incentives to 30 employees who contributed to the development of key technologies for high bandwidth memory (HBM)4. It is unusual for Samsung Electronics to award company shares as performance pay to a specific development team. In the semiconductor industry, the view is that Samsung Electronics recently received positive feedback on HBM4 from a client and provided special incentives to encourage employees.
According to the Financial Supervisory Service's electronic disclosure system on the 3rd, Samsung Electronics held a board meeting on Oct. 30 and approved an agenda item to dispose of treasury shares. The main point is to grant 4,790 shares as incentives to 30 employees who achieved development project targets. Based on the closing price on Oct. 29, the day before the board resolution (105,00 won per share), the incentive amount is 481.39 million won. Through the disclosure, Samsung Electronics said the incentives are intended to encourage performance and motivate the development personnel of projects that achieved their goals.
Samsung Electronics did not specify exactly who is eligible for the incentives. However, in the semiconductor industry, there is talk that the incentives were given to the 10-nanometer (nm) class sixth-generation DRAM 1c development team that met its development goals.
Samsung Electronics is known to be conducting performance evaluations of HBM4 equipped with 1c DRAM together with Nvidia, the world's largest artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor company. HBM4, which improves on the fifth-generation "HBM3E," is drawing attention as a product that will lead the memory market as the AI industry expands. The 1c process applies a finer line width than the existing 1b process, offering superior performance. Based on this technology, Samsung Electronics achieved an industry-leading data transfer speed of 11Gbps. HBM4 prototypes based on 1c DRAM have already been shipped to clients.