Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of memory chips, and KT, Korea’s No. 1 telecommunications company, will work together in green business in the latest sign of the apparent thawing relationship between the two business titans.
The companies signed a pact at a Seoul hotel on Monday to collaborate in the area of green IT systems.
The announcement marks the latest sign of the recovering relationship between Samsung and KT, which had soured after KT launched Apple’s iPhone in November 2009.
Under the green IT deal, KT will use Samsung’s memory chips in its servers at new cloud computing centers. Cloud computing involves storing data and software on remote servers for users to share remotely.
Cloud computing is one of KT’s key projects this year and the company has earmarked some 200 billion won ($178 million) for the establishment of cloud computing servers.
Samsung calls its dynamic random access memory, based on 30-nanometer technology, “green memory chips,” because of its power saving features. It has been keen to develop high-functionality, low power consuming semiconductors, adopting what it calls a “smart and green” strategy.
A server system that adopts Samsung’s memory chips should reduce energy consumption by at least 70 percent compared to conventional server systems. Should KT set up a data center with 1,000 server racks, the company will save some 12 billion won in electricity costs annually, the companies say. That amounts to 70,000 tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to emissions from 4.8 million cars in one day.
“KT hopes to effectively tackle surging data traffic with our server system for cloud computing, and offer a competitive service with greatly reduced electricity costs,” said Song Jung-hee, vice president of KT’s service innovation division.
The companies also plan to showcase the project at the Samsung Semiconductor CIO Forum, which will be held this year in six countries.
“We will work to expand the portion of eco-friendly servers in the world server market through marketing activities with KT,” said Hong Wan-hoon, vice president of Samsung’s memory sales and marketing.
