Friday, October 13th 2023
Samsung Notes: HBM4 Memory is Coming in 2025 with New Assembly and Bonding Technology
According to the editorial blog post published on the Samsung blog by SangJoon Hwang, Executive Vice President and Head of the DRAM Product & Technology Team at Samsung Electronics, we have information that High-Bandwidth Memory 4 (HBM4) is coming in 2025. In the recent timeline of HBM development, we saw the first appearance of HBM memory in 2015 with the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. The second-generation HBM2 appeared with NVIDIA Tesla P100 in 2016, and the third-generation HBM3 saw the light of the day with NVIDIA Hopper GH100 GPU in 2022. Currently, Samsung has developed 9.8 Gbps HBM3E memory, which will start sampling to customers soon.
However, Samsung is more ambitious with development timelines this time, and the company expects to announce HBM4 in 2025, possibly with commercial products in the same calendar year. Interestingly, the HBM4 memory will have some technology optimized for high thermal properties, such as non-conductive film (NCF) assembly and hybrid copper bonding (HCB). The NCF is a polymer layer that enhances the stability of micro bumps and TSVs in the chip, so memory solder bump dies are protected from shock. Hybrid copper bonding is an advanced semiconductor packaging method that creates direct copper-to-copper connections between semiconductor components, enabling high-density, 3D-like packaging. It offers high I/O density, enhanced bandwidth, and improved power efficiency. It uses a copper layer as a conductor and oxide insulator instead of regular micro bumps to increase the connection density needed for HBM-like structures.
Source:
Samsung Blog
However, Samsung is more ambitious with development timelines this time, and the company expects to announce HBM4 in 2025, possibly with commercial products in the same calendar year. Interestingly, the HBM4 memory will have some technology optimized for high thermal properties, such as non-conductive film (NCF) assembly and hybrid copper bonding (HCB). The NCF is a polymer layer that enhances the stability of micro bumps and TSVs in the chip, so memory solder bump dies are protected from shock. Hybrid copper bonding is an advanced semiconductor packaging method that creates direct copper-to-copper connections between semiconductor components, enabling high-density, 3D-like packaging. It offers high I/O density, enhanced bandwidth, and improved power efficiency. It uses a copper layer as a conductor and oxide insulator instead of regular micro bumps to increase the connection density needed for HBM-like structures.
13 Comments on Samsung Notes: HBM4 Memory is Coming in 2025 with New Assembly and Bonding Technology
Im just thinking of something like the AMD chiplet design using these as stacked memory in either the only memory on the card or possibly as a infinity cache thing for Datacenter.
That said, stacking it on top of a CPU to give it even more memory for the IGP chiplet would be great too.
Zen 4 Gaming APU
Eventually, APUs will use faster memory on a 256bit bus + 3D cache or something similar.
PS: 7945HX3D = 7950X3D with lower TDP.
I'm still waiting for the low-cost HBM alternative they announced many years ago, but I guess it was scrapped duo to low demand.
It was designed to use a narrower bus, 512bit compared to 1024bit, which means it could be implemented on the chip it self rather than an expensive silicon interposer. But it seems no body was interested in it, or it has low interest that further working and production was not worth it. I guess LPDDR5 was a cheaper alternative, Apple already using it on their Mx chips.
In theory, such an APU would be cheaper to build then a whole CPU package + dedicated GPU but the problem is HBM is expensive, so I don't know how doable it would be in practice.
The whole point of an apu for most is becuase it's cheap alternative to a cpu/discreet gpu, this would not be cheap.
Don't get me wrong I would love to see PS5/Xbox Series X level APU in the pc space just not holding my breath.