The History on Samsung - Techquickie

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Talk about a company having an identity crisis.
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Originally Posted by y_p_w
At least they never had to change their name. One of their big competitors used to be known as Lucky Goldstar.


The absolute bottom rung even below Kraco,Sparkomatic and Sampo until they re-branded themselves as high end.
 
The first Samsung product I saw was the basic analog-tuning stereo radio bought for my then-new Mazda in December, 1980.
 
These huge investment that get them to where they are will not happen without the banking partners they work with.

Andy Groove (Intel) also mentioned that the Japanese all of a sudden out of nowhere, had huge capitals to jump start their memory businesses in the late 80s / early 90s, that made Intel not able to compete with. The South Koreans are just the new guy to replace the Japanese when the Japanese became too powerful.

Funding source? If similar to TSMC, would likely be some old money banks or World Bank.

Once you have money everything else is achievable.

Sony started with rice cooker, and Toyota start with textile machinery, and Nintendo start with board games / pokers.
 
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Originally Posted by y_p_w
At least they never had to change their name. One of their big competitors used to be known as Lucky Goldstar.

I thought LG stood for "Looks Good" because that's about it in terms of their quality.
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Everything LG I've owned has been absolute garbage with the exception of 1 LCD monitor.
 
I think it's interesting how experience and perception can stay with you...my folks bought a LG fridge in 2002 that was still working without a hiccup in December 2018 when I sold their home and I've had a great LG TV and monitor...whereas the Samsung kitchen package the folks bought in 2010 had niggling problems including a replaced circuit board on the micro, loose connections on the range, flickering oven light that wouldn't stay on or off and not loose, inconsistent oven temps that required reprogramming, LCDs burned out and a few other things...so LG has been stellar in my mind and Samsung is now for TVs or phones only.

I think it's funny that Hyundai and Samsung are also among the biggest shipbuilders in the world and Goldstar used to partner with Fiat in making tractors. What have these guys not been involved with over the course of time??
 
Originally Posted by Vuflanovsky
I think it's funny that Hyundai and Samsung are also among the biggest shipbuilders in the world and Goldstar used to partner with Fiat in making tractors. What have these guys not been involved with over the course of time??

The names are often like the Japanese keiretsu system. In South Korea I think they're called chaebol. You mention Hyundai in shipbuilding. I remember spending less than a day in Seoul back in the early 90s, and the streets were full of Hyundai vehicles, including buses and large trucks. I also saw a lot of Daewoo LeMans, which were almost identical to the version sold as a Pontiac.

The Hyundai Group includes has a shipping company (Hyundai Merchant Marine):

[Linked Image]


There used to be Hyundai Electronics. I remember driving by the US main office in San Jose California. Eventually they were completely spun off and were renamed Hynix. The the SK Group bought a large share and the company was renamed SK Hynix.

I remember GoldStar before the merger with Lucky Chemical. They might have been considered better than Samsung back in the 80s.
 
Like Hitachi heavy machinery and hard drives and consumer electronics and power generation components.
 
Originally Posted by StevieC
Originally Posted by y_p_w
At least they never had to change their name. One of their big competitors used to be known as Lucky Goldstar.

I thought LG stood for "Looks Good" because that's about it in terms of their quality.
lol.gif


Everything LG I've owned has been absolute garbage with the exception of 1 LCD monitor.


Have an LG Android phone, it's been flawless for 2 years.
 
3 phones, 2 TV's, 1 monitor, 1 Stove / 1 Fridge / 1 Washing Machine in the family. All garbage except the monitor.
 
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I have been to all of these shipyards and lived there two years … I had one Samsung fridge and an LG washer fail while there. My family has had poor results and they have been caught price dumping and I don't take that lightly.
The other "appliance" I had from there was a Hyundai lease car … The drivers there are crazy … running red lights is common … cars, trucks, bus …

One thing you will notice is they are loyal to SK brands … so that's one reason KORUS had been a loss for the US and now back to the drawing board …
Well, they are great shipbuilders …
 
Originally Posted by 4WD
I have been to all of these shipyards and lived there two years … I had one Samsung fridge and an LG washer fail while there. My family has had poor results and they have been caught price dumping and I don't take that lightly.
The other "appliance" I had from there was a Hyundai lease car … The drivers there are crazy … running red lights is common … cars, trucks, bus …

One thing you will notice is they are loyal to SK brands … so that's one reason KORUS had been a loss for the US and now back to the drawing board …
Well, they are great shipbuilders …

A coworker of mine was from Korea in the US on a temporary work visa. It wasn't an H-1B (he was from the company's division in Korea) and he fully intended on going back. While he was here he bought a Hyundai Genesis - one with a V8. We asked why he got that particular one, and it was because of some sort of tax incentive. Since it was assembled in Korea when he brought it to Korea it would have required no duties. Even a US assembled Hyundai would have required duties. Also something about it being way cheaper sold in the US than it would have been sold in Korea.

The other people I recall who spent a bit of time in Korea were in the US military. There were a couple of coworkers at another company who spent a bit of time there. One was a career Air Force officer who was stationed there, and he chatted it up a lot with another coworker who was a US Army mechanic. Apparently they spent a lot of time at the same base near Seoul. I mean - my one trip to Seoul we saw a lot of US service members just going shopping.
 
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The names are often like the Japanese keiretsu system. In South Korea I think they're called chaebol. You mention Hyundai in shipbuilding.


Correct, "chaebol." I used to work for LG in the 90s; I started just before the re-branding and it was still called Lucky-Goldstar. I had kept a souvenir business card of that, though I think I lost it over the years...
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With closed markets and skewed rules, these can make a lot of sense. But as markets mature business practices have to be brought into alignment with global standards (transparency, disclosure, market competition, etc.), they become impractical and end up in parts.

I worked in NY and in the investment arm, later divested. I spent a fair amount of time taking clients to Korea to tour companies - all worthy of investment, not just LG. Once, Daewoo was so keen to get investment in their Heavy division - shipbuilding, etc., they arranged a tour out to the shipyard on Okpo Island off the SE coast. They flew me out in an old-school Huey for a tour of the shipyard with the GM. Amazing trip I'll never forget. The aerial view was simply stunning - ULCC's (the big tankers) just strung around in various states of assembly. A scale of industrial action just rarely seen by the average joe.
 
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I have better luck with Samsung when it comes to memory/SSDs and TVs. I think you can't beat Samsung when it comes to RAM, flash and LCDs/OLEDs. Samsung SSDs are all made in-house, unlike others which buy 3rd party controllers and NAND from SK Hynix/Intel-Micron Flash/Toshiba. There's reason why Apple and Lenovo use Samsung PCIe AHCI/NVMe SSDs in their higher-end machines.

My parents have some Samsung appliances, they're going back to Whirlpool when that time comes around. No problems with their Sammy gas range and a dishwasher in a rental property though. A fridge and washer needed a service call. In Korea, Samsung also runs shopping malls, issues credit cards and was involved in aerospace with GE and Boeing as Samsung Techwin(they also armed the Korean military) - it's now Hanhwa Techwin.
 
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Originally Posted by nthach
I have better luck with Samsung when it comes to memory/SSDs and TVs. I think you can't beat Samsung when it comes to RAM, flash and LCDs/OLEDs. Samsung SSDs are all made in-house, unlike others which buy 3rd party controllers and NAND from SK Hynix/Intel-Micron Flash/Toshiba. There's reason why Apple and Lenovo use Samsung PCIe AHCI/NVMe SSDs in their higher-end machines.

I dunno. Apple has always been brand agnostic. And if the teardown reports are correct, they've been making a lot of their own SSD controllers. And aren't Apple SSDs non-standard using unique pinouts and different protocols? Some are even permanent parts of the main board.

Also - SK Hynix has been making their own complete NVMe SSDs.

[Linked Image]


I know a few people who work at their office in Silicon Valley where their controllers are designed. They bought a startup company for that expertise.

Quote
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1261976#
Memory chipmaker SK Hynix Inc., has agreed to buy Link_A_Media Devices Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.). The purchase price was not disclosed.

LAMD, founded in 2004, is a fabless chip company that develops SoCs for the data storage market. On completion of the acquisition LAMD will become a business unit of SK Hynix focused on customized NAND memory controller ICs.

NAND memory controllers are used in applications such as embedded multimedia cards and solid-state drives.
 
Originally Posted by y_p_w

I dunno. Apple has always been brand agnostic. And if the teardown reports are correct, they've been making a lot of their own SSD controllers. And aren't Apple SSDs non-standard using unique pinouts and different protocols? Some are even permanent parts of the main board.



For the rMBPs from 2012-2015, Apple used mSATA but physically incompatible with a OTS mSATA for a PC like what Lenovo made popular. That was on the 2012 to mid-2013 rMBPs. The late-2013 to 2015 rMBPs used PCIe AHCI SSDs but the drives are physically incompatible with M.2 slots keyed for PCIe SSDs. There are adapters to fit a OTS mSATA or M.2 PCIe SSD into a rMBP. And High Sierra/Mojave supports NVMe for the late-2013 and newer rMBPs.

The new touch bar/TouchID MacBooks are all soldered on, and pretty soon Lenovo and HP will jump on that. Microsoft is already using soldered-on SSDs on the Surface.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+6+Teardown/113786
 
Originally Posted by nthach
I have better luck with Samsung when it comes to memory/SSDs and TVs. I think you can't beat Samsung when it comes to RAM, flash and LCDs/OLEDs. Samsung SSDs are all made in-house, unlike others which buy 3rd party controllers and NAND from SK Hynix/Intel-Micron Flash/Toshiba. There's reason why Apple and Lenovo use Samsung PCIe AHCI/NVMe SSDs in their higher-end machines.


Making their own controller or not really has nothing to do with the quality, it is more of how much R&D each company wants to spend and what they already make. Intel and Toshiba obviously don't make DRAM anymore and SK Hynix technically make all of them as well (but they are not anywhere close to the best in SSD). On the other hand WD Black is really great but they don't make DRAM at all.

BTW, every computer brand use at least 2 suppliers, and since Samsung has 30%+ market share, everyone has to buy Samsung as well.

Apple bought Anobit, a group founded by M-System veterans in Israel (after they left when SanDisk bought them). Apple wants to integrate the flash controller into their A processor and use it with the NAND they buy from various OEM. I'd not be surprised if their laptop will use this controller with custom file system instead of the standard NVMe command in the future.
 
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Originally Posted by PandaBear


Apple bought Anobit, a group founded by M-System veterans in Israel (after they left when SanDisk bought them). Apple wants to integrate the flash controller into their A processor and use it with the NAND they buy from various OEM. I'd not be surprised if their laptop will use this controller with custom file system instead of the standard NVMe command in the future.

I've heard of M-Systems, they were a early pioneer of solid-state storage for embedded systems beyond that used for BIOS.

Apple started using PCIe NVMe in the iPhone 7 to take advantage of parallelism with bigger NAND chips and the new MacBooks have their storage soldered on. I'm not shocked Apple wants to make their own controllers so they aren't dependent on Samsung, Marvell, or the Taiwanese(Phison and Silicon Motion).

Samsung decided to use UFS instead of eMMC to interface storage to their SoCs. And most Android phones use eMMC. I guess it makes adding external storage easier since they don't need to add a USB to SD card host?
 
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