After announcing a 133 trillion won ($114 billion) investment in research and development of non-memory semiconductors last week, Samsung Electronics said Thursday its artificial intelligence research institute in Montreal, Canada, has been expanded to support the company’s drive for system chips.

The company said the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology’s AI Lab in Montreal has been incorporated into the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms by recently moving into Mila's building.

Founded by professor Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal, Mila is one of the best research centers in the field of deep learning and has a partnership with the University of Montreal and McGill University.

Samsung is the first Korean business to be located at the Canadian institute for deep learning, which hires globally renowned AI experts. 

By moving into Mila, Samsung has expanded the size of its AI Montreal lab, whose workforce will additionally focus on development of new system chips that are necessary for AI, especially in the fields of unsupervised learning, generative adversarial networks, new deep learning and on-device AI algorithms.

To support such efforts, this AI Lab has recruited leaders in deep learning research, including Simon Lacoste-Julien, a professor at the University of Montreal, who recently joined as the leader of the lab, the company said.

Samsung also plans to dispatch R&D personnel from its device solutions division to Montreal over time and to utilize the AI lab as a base for training AI researchers and collaborating with other advanced AI research institutes. 

“Samsung’s collaboration with Mila is well established already and has been productive and built strong trust on both sides,” professor Yoshua Bengio.

“With a new SAIT lab in the midst of the recently inaugurated Mila building, and many exciting research challenges ahead of us in AI, I expect even more mutually positive outcomes in the future.“

SAIT and Bengio have collaborated on deep learning algorithm research since 2014, successfully publishing three papers on academic journals.

“SAIT focuses on research and development -- not only in next-generation semiconductors but also innovative AI as a seed technology in system semiconductors,” said Hwang Sung-woo, executive vice president and deputy head of SAIT.

“SAIT AI Lab Montreal will play a key role within Samsung to redefine AI theory and deep learning algorithm for the next 10 years.”

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)