According to Businesskorea reports, late last year, Samsung Electronics hired Benny Katibian, who was the vice president of Qualcomm’s engineering department, as its senior vice president of the US company. After Benny Katibian took office, he served as the head of Samsung Electronics America’s core R&D center – Samsung Austin Research Center (SARC) and Advanced Computing Laboratory (ACL).
Benny Katibian is an expert in self-driving semiconductors. He was responsible for developing autonomous driving systems such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) at Qualcomm and later served as chief operating officer of Chinese electric car company Xiaopeng Motors North America, where he orchestrated the development of its self-driving chips.
The hiring is said to be part of Samsung Electronics’ efforts to expand its automotive system-on-chip (SoC) business, which has huge growth potential. Samsung Electronics’ system LSI division has now launched Exynos Auto, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based automotive processor. Samsung’s primary goal now is to upgrade Exynos Auto to strengthen its dominant market position.
Exynos Auto is being supplied to major European automakers, such as Volkswagen and Audi. At the request of BMW, Samsung has also provided the latter with a prototype automotive semiconductor.
