SK hynix unveiled a new consumer product based on its latest solid-state drive (SSD), PCB01, which boasts industry-leading performance levels at GPU Technology Conference (GTC) 2024. Hosted by NVIDIA in San Jose, California from March 18-21, GTC is one of the world's leading conferences for AI developers. Applied to on-device AI PCs, PCB01 is a PCIe fifth-generation SSD which recently had its performance and reliability verified by a major global customer. After completing product development in the first half of 2024, SK hynix plans to launch two versions of PCB01 by the end of the year which target both major technology companies and general consumers.

Optimized for AI PCs, Capable of Loading LLMs Within One Second
Offering the industry's highest sequential read speed of 14 gigabytes per second (GB/s) and a sequential write speed of 12 GB/s, PCB01 doubles the speed specifications of its previous generation. This enables the loading of LLMs required for AI learning and inference in less than one second. To make on-device AIs operational, PC manufacturers create a structure that stores an LLM in the PC's internal storage and quickly transfers the data to DRAMs for AI tasks. In this process, the PCB01 inside the PC efficiently supports the loading of LLMs. SK hynix expects these characteristics of its latest SSD to greatly increase the speed and quality of on-device AIs.

NVIDIA on Monday, at the 2024 GTC conference, unveiled the "Blackwell" B200 and GB200 AI GPUs. These are designed to offer an incredible 5X the AI inferencing performance gain over the current-gen "Hopper" H100, and come with four times the on-package memory. The B200 "Blackwell" is the largest chip physically possible using existing foundry tech, according to its makers. The chip is an astonishing 208 billion transistors, and is made up of two chiplets, which by themselves are the largest possible chips.

Each chiplet is built on the TSMC N4P foundry node, which is the most advanced 4 nm-class node by the Taiwanese foundry. Each chiplet has 104 billion transistors. The two chiplets have a high degree of connectivity with each other, thanks to a 10 TB/s custom interconnect. This is enough bandwidth and latency for the two to maintain cache coherency (i.e. address each other's memory as if they're their own). Each of the two "Blackwell" chiplets has a 4096-bit memory bus, and is wired to 96 GB of HBM3E spread across four 24 GB stacks; which totals to 192 GB for the B200 package. The GPU has a staggering 8 TB/s of memory bandwidth on tap. The B200 package features a 1.8 TB/s NVLink interface for host connectivity, and connectivity to another B200 chip.

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it has begun volume production of HBM3E, the newest AI memory product with ultra-high performance, for supply to a customer from late March. The company made public its success with the HBM3E development just seven months ago. SK hynix being the first provider of HBM3E, a product with the best performing DRAM chips, extends its earlier success with HBM3. The company expects a successful volume production of HBM3E, along with its experiences also as the industry's first provider of HBM3, to help cement its leadership in the AI memory space.

In order to build a successful AI system that processes a huge amount of data quickly, a semiconductor package should be composed in a way that numerous AI processors and memories are multi-connected. Global big tech companies have been increasingly requiring stronger performance of AI semiconductor and SK hynix expects its HBM3E to be their optimal choice that meets such growing expectations.

Jensen Huang's opening GTC 2024 keynote is scheduled to happen tomorrow afternoon (13:00 Pacific time)—many industry experts believe that the NVIDIA boss will take the stage and formally introduce his company's B100 "Blackwell" GPU architecture. An enlightened few have been treated to preview (AI and HPC) units—including Dell's CEO, Jeff Clarke—but pre-introduction leaks have not flowed out. Team Green is likely enforcing strict conditions upon a fortunate selection of trusted evaluators, within a pool of ecosystem partners and customers.

Today, a brave soul has broken that silence—tech tipster, AGF/XpeaGPU, fears repercussions from the leather-jacketed one. They revealed a handful of technical details, a day prior to Team Green's highly anticipated unveiling: "I don't want to spoil NVIDIA B100 launch tomorrow, but this thing is a monster. 2 dies on (TSMC) CoWoS-L, 8x8-Hi HBM3E stacks for 192 GB of memory." They also crystal balled an inevitable follow-up card: "one year later, B200 goes with 12-Hi stacks and will offer a beefy 288 GB. And the performance! It's... oh no Jensen is there... me run away!" Reuters has also joined in on the fun, with some predictions and insider information: "NVIDIA is unlikely to give specific pricing, but the B100 is likely to cost more than its predecessor, which sells for upwards of $20,000." Enterprise products are expected to arrive first—possibly later this year—followed by gaming variants, maybe months later.

Samsung Electronics is all set to discuss the future of AI, alongside Jensen Huang, at NVIDIA's upcoming GTC 2024 conference. South Korean insiders have leaked the company's intentions, only days before the event's March 18 kickoff time. Their recently unveiled 36 GB HBM3E 12H DRAM product is expected to be the main focus of official presentations—additionally, a new storage subscription service is marked down for a possible live introduction. An overall "Redefining AI Infrastructure" presentation could include—according to BusinessKorea—a planned launch of: "petabyte (PB)-level SSD solution, dubbed 'PBSSD,' along with a subscription service in the US market within the second quarter (of 2024) to address the era of ultra-high-capacity data."

A Samsung statement—likely sourced from leaked material—summarized this business model: "the subscription service will help reduce initial investment costs in storage infrastructure for our customers and cut down on maintenance expenses." Under agreed upon conditions, customers are not required to purchasing ultra-high-capacity SSD solutions outright: "enterprises using the service can flexibly utilize SSD storage without the need to build separate infrastructure, while simultaneously receiving various services from Samsung Electronics related to storage management, security, and upgrades." A special session—"The Value of Storage as a Service for AI/ML and Data Analysis"—is alleged to be on the company's GTC schedule.

Industry insiders reckon that Samsung Electronics is transitioning to molded underfill (MR-MUF) production techniques—rival memory manufacturer, SK Hynix, champions this chip making technology. A Reuters exclusive has cited claims made by five industry moles—they believe that Samsung is reacting to underwhelming HBM production yields. The publication proposes that: "one of the reasons Samsung has fallen behind (competing producers) is its decision to stick with chip making technology called non-conductive film (NCF) that causes some production issues, while Hynix switched to the mass reflow molded underfill (MR-MUF) method to address NCF's weakness." The report suggests that Samsung is in the process of ordering new MUF-related equipment.

One anonymous source stated: "Samsung had to do something to ramp up its HBM (production) yields... adopting MUF technique is a little bit of swallow-your-pride type thing for (them), because it ended up following the technique first used by SK Hynix." Reuters managed to extract a response from the giant South Korean multinational—a company spokesperson stated: "we are carrying out our HBM3E product business as planned." They indicated that NCF technology remains in place as an "optimal solution." Post-publication, another official response was issued: "rumors that Samsung will apply MR-MUF to its HBM production are not true." Insiders propose a long testing phase—Samsung is rumored to be sourcing MUF materials, but mass production is not expected to start this year. Three insiders allege that Samsung is planning to "use both NCF and MUF techniques" for a new-generation HBM chip.

SK Hynix believes that it leads the industry with the development and production of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) solutions, but rival memory manufacturers are working hard on equivalent fifth generation packages. NVIDIA was expected to select SK Hynix as the main supplier of HBM3E parts for utilization on H200 "Hopper" AI GPUs, but a surprise announcement was issued by Micron's press team last month. The American firm revealed that HBM3E volume production had commenced: ""(our) 24 GB 8H HBM3E will be part of NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs, which will begin shipping in the second calendar quarter of 2024. This milestone positions Micron at the forefront of the industry, empowering artificial intelligence (AI) solutions with HBM3E's industry-leading performance and energy efficiency."

According to a Korea JoongAng Daily report, this boast has reportedly "shocked" the likes of SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics. They believe that Micron's: "announcement was a revolt from an underdog, as the US company barely held 10 percent of the global market last year." The article also points out some behind-the-scenes legal wrangling: "the cutthroat competition became more evident when the Seoul court sided with SK Hynix on Thursday (March 7) by granting a non-compete injunction to prevent its former researcher, who specialized in HBM, from working at Micron. He would be fined 10 million won for each day in violation." SK Hynix is likely pinning its next-gen AI GPU hopes on a 12-layer DRAM stacked HBM3E product—industry insiders posit that evaluation samples were submitted to NVIDIA last month. The outlook for these units is said to be very positive—mass production could start as early as this month.

Lee Kang-Wook, Vice President of Research and Development at SK Hynix, has discussed the increased importance of advanced chip packaging with Bloomberg News. In an interview with the media company's business section, Lee referred to a tradition of prioritizing the design and fabrication of chips: "the first 50 years of the semiconductor industry has been about the front-end." He believes that the latter half of production processes will take precedence in the future: "...but the next 50 years is going to be all about the back-end." He outlined a "more than $1 billion" investment into South Korean facilities—his department is hoping to "improve the final steps" of chip manufacturing.

SK Hynix's Head of Packaging Development pioneered a novel method of packaging the third generation of high bandwidth technology (HBM2E)—that innovation secured NVIDIA as a high-profile and long term customer. Demand for Team Green's AI GPUs has boosted the significance of HBM technologies—Micron and Samsung are attempting to play catch up with new designs. South Korea's leading memory supplier is hoping to stay ahead in the next-gen HBM contest—supposedly 12-layer fifth generation samples have been submitted to NVIDIA for approval. SK Hynix's Vice President recently revealed that HBM production volumes for 2024 have sold out—currently company leadership is considering the next steps for market dominance in 2025. The majority of the firm's newly announced $1 billion budget will be spent on the advancement of MR-MUF and TSV technologies, according to their R&D chief.

South Korean tech insiders believe that SK Hynix has sent "12-layer DRAM stacked HBM3E (5th generation HBM)" prototype samples to NVIDIA—according a ZDNET.co.kr article, initial examples were shipped out last month. Reports from mid-2023 suggested that Team Green had sampled 8-layer HBM3E (4th gen) units around summer time—with SK Hynix receiving approval notices soon after. Another South Korean media outlet, DealSite, reckons that NVIDIA's memory qualification process has exposed HBM yield problems across a number of manufacturers. SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron are competing fiercely on the HBM3E front—with hopes of getting their respective products attached to NVIDIA's H200 AI GPU. DigiTimes Asia proposed that SK Hynix is ready to "commence mass production of fifth-generation HBM3E" at some point this month.

SK Hynix is believed to be leading the pack—insiders believe that yield rates are good enough to pass early NVIDIA certification, and advanced 12-layer samples are expected to be approved in the near future. ZDNET reckons that SK Hynix's forward momentum has placed it an advantageous position: "(They) supplied 8-layer HBM3E samples in the second half of last year and passed recent testing. Although the official schedule has not been revealed, mass production is expected to begin as early as this month. Furthermore, SK Hynix supplied 12-layer HBM3E samples to NVIDIA last month. This sample is an extremely early version and is mainly used to establish standards and characteristics of new products. SK Hynix calls it UTV (Universal Test Vehicle)... Since Hynix has already completed the performance verification of the 8-layer HBM3E, it is expected that the 12-layer HBM3E test will not take much time." SK Hynix's Vice President recently revealed that his company's 2024 HBM production volumes for were already sold out, and leadership is already preparing innovations for 2025 and beyond.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has developed HBM3E 12H, the industry's first 12-stack HBM3E DRAM and the highest-capacity HBM product to date. Samsung's HBM3E 12H provides an all-time high bandwidth of up to 1,280 gigabytes per second (GB/s) and an industry-leading capacity of 36 gigabytes (GB). In comparison to the 8-stack HBM3 8H, both aspects have improved by more than 50%.

"The industry's AI service providers are increasingly requiring HBM with higher capacity, and our new HBM3E 12H product has been designed to answer that need," said Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning at Samsung Electronics. "This new memory solution forms part of our drive toward developing core technologies for high-stack HBM and providing technological leadership for the high-capacity HBM market in the AI era."

Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU), a global leader in memory and storage solutions, today announced it has begun volume production of its HBM3E (High Bandwidth Memory 3E) solution. Micron's 24 GB 8H HBM3E will be part of NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs, which will begin shipping in the second calendar quarter of 2024. This milestone positions Micron at the forefront of the industry, empowering artificial intelligence (AI) solutions with HBM3E's industry-leading performance and energy efficiency. As the demand for AI continues to surge, the need for memory solutions to keep pace with expanded workloads is critical.

Micron's HBM3E solution addresses this challenge head-on with:

• Superior Performance: With pin speed greater than 9.2 gigabits per second (Gb/s), Micron's HBM3E delivers more than 1.2 terabytes per second (TB/s) of memory bandwidth, enabling lightning-fast data access for AI accelerators, supercomputers, and data centers.
• Exceptional Efficiency: Micron's HBM3E leads the industry with ~30% lower power consumption compared to competitive offerings. To support increasing demand and usage of AI, HBM3E offers maximum throughput with the lowest levels of power consumption to improve important data center operational expense metrics.
• Seamless Scalability: With 24 GB of capacity today, Micron's HBM3E allows data centers to seamlessly scale their AI applications. Whether for training massive neural networks or accelerating inferencing tasks, Micron's solution provides the necessary memory bandwidth.

SK Hynix has unveiled ambitious High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) roadmaps at SEMICON Korea 2024. Vice President Kim Chun-hwan announced plans to mass produce the cutting-edge HBM3E within the first half of 2024, touting 8-layer stack samples already supplied to clients. This iteration makes major strides towards fulfilling surging data bandwidth demands, offering 1.2 TB/s per stack and 7.2 TB/s in a 6-stack configuration. VP Kim Chun-hwan cites the rapid emergence of generative AI, forecasted for 35% CAGR, as a key driver. He warns that "fierce survival competition" lies ahead across the semiconductor industry amidst rising customer expectations. With limits approaching on conventional process node shrinks, attention is shifting to next-generation memory architectures and materials to unleash performance.

SK Hynix has already initiated HBM4 development for sampling in 2025 and mass production the following year. According to Micron, HBM4 will leverage a wider 2048-bit interface compared to previous HBM generations to increase per-stack theoretical peak memory bandwidth to over 1.5 TB/s. To achieve these high bandwidths while maintaining reasonable power consumption, HBM4 is targeting a data transfer rate of around 6 GT/s. The wider interface and 6 GT/s speeds allow HBM4 to push bandwidth boundaries significantly compared to prior HBM versions, fueling the need for high-performance computing and AI workloads. But power efficiency is carefully balanced by avoiding impractically high transfer rates. Additionally, Samsung is aligned on a similar 2025/2026 timeline. Beyond pushing bandwidth boundaries, custom HBM solutions will become increasingly crucial. Samsung executive Jaejune Kim reveals that over half its HBM volume already comprises specialized products. Further tailoring HBM4 to individual client needs through logic integration presents an opportunity to cement leadership. As AI workloads evolve at breakneck speeds, memory innovation must keep pace. With HBM3E prepping for launch and HBM4 in the plan, SK Hynix and Samsung are gearing up for the challenges ahead.

Samsung isn't the only Korean memory giant showing off its latest tech at the upcoming IEEE Solid State Circuit Conference (SSCC) in February, 2024; it will be joined by SK Hynix, which will demo competing tech across both its volatile and non-volatile memory lines. To begin with, SK Hynix will be the second company to show off a GDDR7 memory chip, after Samsung. The SK Hynix chip is capable of 35.4 Gbps speeds, which is lower than the 37 Gbps Samsung is showing off, but at the same 16 Gbit density. This density allows the deployment of 16 GB of video memory across a 256-bit memory bus. Not all next-generation GPUs will max out 37 Gbps, some may run at lower memory speeds, and they have suitable options in the SK Hynix product stack. Much like Samsung, SK Hynix is implementing PAM3 I/O signaling, and a proprietary low-power architecture (though the company wouldn't elaborate on whether it's similar to the four low-speed clock states as the Samsung chips).

GDDR7 is bound to dominate the next generation of graphics cards across the gaming and pro-vis segments; however the AI HPC processor market will continue to bank heavily on HBM3E. SK Hynix has innovated here, and will show off a new 16-high 48 GB (384 Gbit) HBM3E stack design that's capable of 1280 GB/s over a single stack. A processor with even four such stacks will have 192 GB of memory at 5.12 TB/s of bandwidth. The stack implements a new all-around power TSV (through silicon via) design, and a 6-phase RDQS (read data queue strobe) scheme, for TSV area optimization. Lastly, the SK Hynix sessions will also include the first demo of its ambitious LPDDR5T (LPDDR5 Turbo) memory standard aimed at smartphones, tablets, and thin-and-light notebooks. This chip achieves a data-rate of 10.5 Gb/s per pin, and a DRAM voltage of 1.05 V. Such high data speeds are possible thanks to a proprietary parasitic capacitance reduction technology, and a voltage offset calibrated receiver tech.

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it recorded an operating profit of 346 billion won in the fourth quarter of last year amid a recovery of the memory chip market, marking the first quarter of profit following four straight quarters of losses. The company posted revenues of 11.31 trillion won, operating profit of 346 billion won (operating profit margin at 3%), and net loss of 1.38 trillion won (net profit margin at negative 12%) for the three months ended December 31, 2023. (Based on K-IFRS)

SK hynix said that the overall memory market conditions improved in the last quarter of 2023 with demand for AI server and mobile applications increasing and average selling price (ASP) rising. "We recorded the first quarterly profit in a year following efforts to focus on profitability," it said. The financial results of the last quarter helped narrow the operating loss for the entire year to 7.73 trillion won (operating profit margin at negative 24%) and net loss to 9.14 trillion won (with net profit margin at negative 28%). The revenues were 32.77 trillion won.

Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron are considered to be the top manufacturing sources of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM)—the HBM3 and HBM3E standards are becoming increasingly in demand, due to a widespread deployment of GPUs and accelerators by generative AI companies. Taiwan's Commercial Times proposes that there is an ongoing shortage of HBM components—but this presents a growth opportunity for smaller manufacturers in the region. Naturally, the big name producers are expected to dive in head first with the development of next generation models. The aforementioned financial news article cites research conducted by the Gartner group—they predict that the HBM market will hit an all-time high of $4.976 billion (USD) by 2025.

This estimate is almost double that of projected revenues (just over $2 billion) generated by the HBM market in 2023—the explosive growth of generative AI applications has "boosted" demand for the most performant memory standards. The Commercial Times report states that SK Hynix is the current HBM3E leader, with Micron and Samsung trailing behind—industry experts believe that stragglers will need to "expand HBM production capacity" in order to stay competitive. SK Hynix has shacked up with NVIDIA—the GH200 Grace Hopper platform was unveiled last summer; outfitted with the South Korean firm's HBM3e parts. In a similar timeframe, Samsung was named as AMD's preferred supplier of HBM3 packages—as featured within the recently launched Instinct MI300X accelerator. NVIDIA's HBM3E deal with SK Hynix is believed to extend to the internal makeup of Blackwell GB100 data-center GPUs. The HBM4 memory standard is expected to be the next major battleground for the industry's hardest hitters.

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it will showcase the technology for ultra-high performance memory products, the core of future AI infrastructure, at CES 2024, the most influential tech event in the world taking place from January 9 through 12 in Las Vegas. SK hynix said that it will highlight its future vision represented by its Memory Centric at the show and promote the importance of memory products accelerating the technological innovation in the AI era and its competitiveness in the global memory markets.

The company will run a space titled SK Wonderland jointly with other major SK Group affiliates including SK Inc., SK Innovation and SK Telecom, and showcase its major AI memory products including HBM3E. SK hynix plans to provide HBM3E, the world's best-performing memory product that it successfully developed in August, to the world's largest AI technology companies by starting mass production from the first half of 2024.

SK hynix presented its leading AI and high-performance computing (HPC) solutions at Supercomputing 2023 (SC23) held in Denver, Colorado between November 12-17. Organized by the Association for Computing Machinery and IEEE Computer Society since 1988, the annual SC conference showcases the latest advancements in HPC, networking, storage, and data analysis. SK hynix marked its first appearance at the conference by introducing its groundbreaking memory solutions to the HPC community. During the six-day event, several SK hynix employees also made presentations revealing the impact of the company's memory solutions on AI and HPC.

Displaying Advanced HPC & AI Products
At SC23, SK hynix showcased its products tailored for AI and HPC to underline its leadership in the AI memory field. Among these next-generation products, HBM3E attracted attention as the HBM solution meets the industry's highest standards of speed, capacity, heat dissipation, and power efficiency. These capabilities make it particularly suitable for data-intensive AI server systems. HBM3E was presented alongside NVIDIA's H100, a high-performance GPU for AI that uses HBM3 for its memory.

ASUS today announced a showcase of the latest AI solutions to empower innovation and push the boundaries of supercomputing, at Supercomputing 2023 (SC23) in Denver, Colorado, from 12-17 November, 2023. ASUS will demonstrate the latest AI advances, including generative-AI solutions and sustainability breakthroughs with Intel, to deliver the latest hybrid immersion-cooling solutions, plus lots more - all at booth number 257.

At SC23, ASUS will showcase the latest NVIDIA-qualified ESC N8A-E12 HGX H100 eight-GPU server empowered by dual-socket AMD EPYC 9004 processors and is designed for enterprise-level generative AI with market-leading integrated capabilities. Related to NVIDIA announcement on the latest NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPU at SC23, which is the first GPU to offer HBM3E for faster, larger memory to fuel the acceleration of generative AI and large language models, ASUS will offer an update of H100-based system with an H200-based drop-in replacement in 2024.

NVIDIA today announced it has supercharged the world's leading AI computing platform with the introduction of the NVIDIA HGX H200. Based on NVIDIA Hopper architecture, the platform features the NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPU with advanced memory to handle massive amounts of data for generative AI and high performance computing workloads.

The NVIDIA H200 is the first GPU to offer HBM3e - faster, larger memory to fuel the acceleration of generative AI and large language models, while advancing scientific computing for HPC workloads. With HBM3e, the NVIDIA H200 delivers 141 GB of memory at 4.8 terabytes per second, nearly double the capacity and 2.4x more bandwidth compared with its predecessor, the NVIDIA A100. H200-powered systems from the world's leading server manufacturers and cloud service providers are expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2024.

Samsung Electronics today reported financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2023. Total consolidated revenue was KRW 67.40 trillion, a 12% increase from the previous quarter, mainly due to new smartphone releases and higher sales of premium display products. Operating profit rose sequentially to KRW 2.43 trillion based on strong sales of flagship models in mobile and strong demand for displays, as losses at the Device Solutions (DS) Division narrowed.

The Memory Business reduced losses sequentially as sales of high valued-added products and average selling prices somewhat increased. Earnings in system semiconductors were impacted by a delay in demand recovery for major applications, but the Foundry Business posted a new quarterly high for new backlog from design wins. The mobile panel business reported a significant increase in earnings on the back of new flagship model releases by major customers, while the large panel business narrowed losses in the quarter. The Device eXperience (DX) Division achieved solid results due to robust sales of premium smartphones and TVs. Revenue at the Networks Business declined in major overseas markets as mobile operators scaled back investments.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced memory technology, today held its annual Memory Tech Day, showcasing industry-first innovations and new memory products to accelerate technological advancements across future applications—including the cloud, edge devices and automotive vehicles.

Attended by about 600 customers, partners and industry experts, the event served as a platform for Samsung executives to expand on the company's vision for "Memory Reimagined," covering long-term plans to continue its memory technology leadership, outlook on market trends and sustainability goals. The company also presented new product innovations such as the HBM3E Shinebolt, LPDDR5X CAMM2 and Detachable AutoSSD.

SK hynix showcased its next-generation memory semiconductor technologies and solutions at the OCP Global Summit 2023 held in San Jose, California from October 17-19. The OCP Global Summit is an annual event hosted by the world's largest data center technology community, the Open Compute Project (OCP), where industry experts gather to share various technologies and visions. This year, SK hynix and its subsidiary Solidigm showcased advanced semiconductor memory products that will lead the AI era under the slogan "United Through Technology".

SK hynix presented a broad range of its solutions at the summit, including its leading HBM(HBM3/3E), CXL, and AiM products for generative AI. The company also unveiled some of the latest additions to its product portfolio including its DDR5 RDIMM, MCR DIMM, enterprise SSD (eSSD), and LPDDR CAMM devices. Visitors to the HBM exhibit could see HBM3, which is utilized in NVIDIA's H100, a high-performance GPU for AI, and also check out the next-generation HBM3E. Due to their low-power consumption and ultra-high-performance, these HBM solutions are more eco-friendly and are particularly suitable for power-hungry AI server systems.

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.

SK hynix announced on September 22 that it showcased its latest memory technologies and products at Intel Innovation 2023 held September 19-20 in the western U.S. city of San Jose, California. Hosted by Intel since 2019, Intel Innovation is an annual IT exhibition which brings together the technology company's customers and partners to share the latest developments in the industry. At this year's event held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, SK hynix showcased its advanced semiconductor memory products which are essential in the generative AI era under the slogan "Pioneer Tomorrow With the Best."

Products that garnered the most interest were HBM3, which supports the high-speed performance of AI accelerators, and DDR5 RDIMM, a DRAM module for servers with 1bnm process technology. As one of SK hynix's core technologies, HBM3 has established the company as a trailblazer in AI memory. SK hynix plans to further strengthen its position in the market by mass-producing HBM3E (Extended) from 2024. Meanwhile, DDR5 RDIMM with 1bnm, or the 5th generation of the 10 nm process technology, also offers outstanding performance. In addition to supporting unprecedented transfer speeds of more than 6,400 megabits per second (Mbps), this low-power product helps customers simultaneously reduce costs and improve ESG performance.

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it successfully developed HBM3E, the next-generation of the highest-specification DRAM for AI applications currently available, and said a customer's evaluation of samples is underway. The company said that the successful development of HBM3E, the extended version of HBM3 which delivers the world's best specifications, comes on top of its experience as the industry's sole mass provider of HBM3. With its experience as the supplier of the industry's largest volume of HBM products and the mass-production readiness level, SK hynix plans to mass produce HBM3E from the first half of next year and solidify its unrivaled leadership in AI memory market.

According to the company, the latest product not only meets the industry's highest standards of speed, the key specification for AI memory products, but all categories including capacity, heat dissipation and user-friendliness. In terms of speed, the HBM3E can process data up to 1.15 terabytes a second, which is equivalent to processing more than 230 Full-HD movies of 5 GB-size each in a second.