On the 18th, a photo of Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and AMD Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Lisa Su meeting at Seungjiwon drew interest in the business community. Behind the two heavyweights, a grandfather clock was spotted swinging its weight inside a stately wooden case.
The clock is a product of Hermle, a German brand with a 100-year tradition, and some read it as more than a simple interior piece—a symbolic device that reveals Samsung's management philosophy and its manufacturing-based identity. Founded in 1922, Hermle is a family with the world's highest authority in the manufacture of the "movement," the heart of a mechanical clock, and its mechanism—hundreds of gears meshing without error—is considered the quintessence of precision engineering.
Mechanical clocks were the culmination of industrial development that concentrated the highest level of precision machining technology of the 19th and 20th centuries. The structure in which hundreds of tiny parts mesh perfectly to allow not even a one-second deviation aligns in technical essence with today's semiconductor industry, which handles extreme processes at the nanometer (nm) scale.
In particular, Hermle's technology, which has set the standard for mechanical clock engines worldwide, runs parallel to advanced semiconductor wafer processes that demand both standardization and finesse. In the end, the shared DNA of "ultra-precision manufacturing" runs through the clock industry of the past and the semiconductor industry of the present.
It is also notable that this message was sent from Seungjiwon (承志園), which means "to carry on the will of the forebears." Used by former Chairman Lee Kun-hee as both an office and a guesthouse where he made key decisions with global leaders, the site is akin to the heart of Samsung's management philosophy. In the past, Samsung has often conveyed its corporate direction elegantly through spaces and objects.
A representative example is the Joseon white porcelain that Chairman Lee Kun-hee placed in the reception room, which is cited as a case that visualized Samsung's pursuit of "flawless quality management" through the spotless aesthetics of pure white. The Leeum Museum of Art, created with the participation of world-renowned architects, has also architecturally embodied the philosophy that detail completes technology, revealing Samsung's refinement.
In this context, it is no accident that a Hermle clock—the essence of German craftsmanship—was positioned prominently at Seungjiwon. It intuitively conveys Samsung's values, which treat quality and precision as matters of life and death, to CEO Lisa Su, while also signaling the will to share the "craftsmanship" that is the foundation of manufacturing.
Starting with this meeting, the two companies agreed to expand cooperation across the board, from supplying sixth-generation HBM (HBM4) to be installed in the next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator Instinct MI455X, to foundry (contract chip manufacturing) using cutting-edge processes. This is expected to be an important watershed in which Samsung's unique "AI chip integrated solution," encompassing memory, foundry, and packaging, aligns with AMD's future roadmap.
If a clock with a 100-year tradition symbolizes a "history of accumulated technology," then the meeting between the two companies marks the opening act of a "technology alliance" that will shape the next 100 years. Just as precise parts mesh organically to keep exact time, the partnership combining Samsung's ultra-precision manufacturing capabilities with AMD's design dominance is drawing industry attention for how it will play in the global AI Semiconductor power race.