SEOUL, Oct. 23 ( Yonhap ) - The Ministry of Commerce , Industry and Energy said Wednesday that it will seek to develop a central processing unit (CPU , according to its acronym in English) Mobile Core Korean type .
The mobile Core CPU is a key block that functions as head application processor (AP) for smartphones.
In 2012, South Korea paid about 350,000 billion won (330.5 million dollars) in royalties for the use of mobile Core CPU, compared to 180,000 billion won (170 million dollars) in 2008.
The development plan is part of the strategies of the ministry, released Wednesday to help the new leap in the semiconductor industry in the country.
The strategies are intended to be converted back to the semiconductor industry, which is in downturn, the main engine of growth of the Korean economy.
The share of semiconductors in South Korean exports, which was 15 percent in 2000, declined steadily to reach 9 percent in 2012. Its share of the national GDP, which peaked at 6.5 percent in 2010, fell to 5 percent in 2012.
The ministry said the reason is that developed strategies modeled for the semiconductor industry in Japan, whose global market share fell from 51 percent in 1988 to 18 percent last year.
The ministry will also seek to develop large diameter wafers of 450 millimeters, which will replace the 300 millimeters that are currently used. To do this, the South Korean manufacturer teams will take part in the Global 450 Consortium ( G450C ), which is a consortium of five major companies - Intel , TSMC, GLOBALFOUNDRIES , IBM and Samsung , in collaboration with the State University of New York , to produce 450 mm wafer .
The volume of the global semiconductor market was 304,300 million. South Korea is the third largest operator with a market share of 14.7 percent, after the United States ( 50.7 percent) and Japan ( 17.8 percent )
