SK hynix Inc. (or 'the Company', www.skhynix.com) today announced financial results for its third quarter 2021 ended on September 30, 2021. The consolidated revenue of the third quarter 2021 was 11.805 trillion won, while the operating profit amounted to 4.172 trillion won and the net income 3.315 trillion won. Operating margin for the quarter was 35% and net margin was 28%.

SK hynix achieved record high quarterly revenue since its foundation, and regained operating profit more than 4 trillion won after two and a half years since the fourth quarter of 2018. The increased semiconductor memory demand for server and smartphone (mobile) applications, alongside the improved product prices, contributed to the Company's record-breaking quarterly revenue.

SK hynix Inc. announced that it has become the first in the industry to successfully develop the High Bandwidth Memory 3, the world's best-performing DRAM. HBM3, the fourth generation of the HBM technology with a combination of multiple DRAM chips vertically connected, is a high value product that innovatively raises the data processing rate.

The latest development, which follows the start of mass production of HBM2E in July last year, is expected to help consolidate the company's leadership in the market. SK hynix was also the first in the industry to start mass production of HBM2E. SK hynix's HBM3 is not only the fastest DRAM in the world, but also comes with the biggest capacity and significantly improved level of quality.

SK Hynix is at the forefront of developing the next generation of stacked high-bandwidth memory, the HBM3 standard. Succeeding the current HBM2e standard, HBM3 will power next-generation HPC and AI processors in high-density multi-chip modules. A Tom's Hardware report citing information from SK Hynix reveals two key details about the new standard. For starters, it could offer per-pin data-rates of 5.2 Gbps, a 44% increase over the 3.6 Gbps that HBM2e caps out at. This results in a per-stack bandwidth of 665 GB/s, compared to 480 GB/s for the HBM2e. A processor with four such stacks (over a 4096-bit wide bus), would hence enjoy 2.66 TB/s of memory bandwidth. It's likely that HBM3 stacks from SK Hynix could implement the DBI Ultra 2.5D/3D hybrid bonding interconnect technology licensed from Xperi Corp.

Korean DRAM and NAND flash giant, SK Hynix, admitted that a rather big batch of its DRAM wafers is defective and in circulation. The size of this defective batch is rumored to be 240,000 wafers according to a Yonhap report, although the company downplays the scale of the problem citing its monthly production output of 1.8 million wafers.

The company said that it is working with its customers who received these wafers, for recall and replacement. "We're currently talking to a limited number of customers affected by this to address the issue. While it's too early to estimate the potential losses, we don't think they would be that significant as the defect is within the range of typical quality issue check." Besides this, the company is battling rumors surrounding the scale of defective DRAM wafers by the company, in circulation. "The scale of the potential losses mentioned in the rumor is absolutely not true and exaggerated," the company said, in a statement to The Register.

Demand for DRAM exceeded expectations in 1Q21 as the proliferation of WFH and distance education resulted in high demand for notebook computers against market headwinds, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Also contributing to the increased DRAM demand was Chinese smartphone brands' ramp-up of component procurement while these companies, including OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi, attempted to seize additional market shares after Huawei's inclusion on the Entity List. Finally, DRAM demand from server manufacturers also saw a gradual recovery. Taken together, these factors led to higher-than-expected shipments from various DRAM suppliers in 1Q21 despite the frequent shortage of such key components as IC and passive components. On the other hand, DRAM prices also entered an upward trajectory in 1Q21 in accordance with TrendForce's previous forecasts. In light of the increases in both shipments and quotes, all DRAM suppliers posted revenue growths in 1Q21, and overall DRAM revenue for the quarter reached US$19.2 billion, an 8.7% growth QoQ.

Demand for PC, mobile, graphics, and special DRAM remains healthy in 2Q21. Furthermore, after two to three quarters of inventory reduction during which their DRAM demand was relatively sluggish, some server manufacturers have now kicked off a new round of procurement as they expect a persistent increase in DRAM prices. TrendForce therefore forecasts a significant QoQ increase in DRAM ASP in 2Q21. In conjunction with increased bit shipment, this price hike will likely drive total DRAM revenue for 2Q21 to increase by more than 20% QoQ.

Today, we are getting a report coming from the South Korean press, stating that the country of South Korea has just given SK Hynix the green light to start building the mega factory complex. Being in the planning phase for a long time, the new mega factory is going to be located in Yongin, a city set 50 km south of the capital Seoul. The company expects to break ground with construction in Q4 of this year, and finish everything and start volume production of DRAM in 2025. When it comes to the size of the new mega factory, the plant is going to have an area of ​​4.15 million square meters.

The total cost of it will be about $106 billion worth of investment from SK Hynix, making all the recent fab construction plans look tiny compared to this massive investment. The mega factory complex would consist out of four fabs, where their total wafer per month output would be around 800,000. These foundries will be in charge of producing regular DRAM, and next-generation DRAM technologies like we have talked about just a few days ago. It remains to be seen what the company will come out with in the future, however, we are watching its moves closely.

On March 22nd, the CEO of SK Hynix, Seok-Hee Lee, gave a keynote speech to the IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS) and shared with experts a part of its plan for the future of SK Hynix products. The CEO took the stage and delivered some conceptual technologies that the company is working on right now. At the center of the show, two distinct products stood out - 3D NAND and DRAM. So far, the company has believed that its 3D NAND scaling was very limited and that it can push up to 500 layers sometime in the future before the limit is reached. However, according to the latest research, SK Hynix will be able to produce 600-layer 3D NAND technology in the distant future.

So far, the company has managed to manufacture and sample 512Gb 176-layer 3D NAND chips, so the 600-layer solutions are still far away. Nonetheless, it is a possibility that we are looking at. Before we reach that layer number, there are various problems needed to be solved so the technology can work. According to SK Hynix, "the company introduced the atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology to further improve the cell property of efficiently storing electric charges and exporting them when needed, while developing technology to maintain uniform electric charges over a certain amount through the innovation of dielectric materials. In addition to this, to solve film stress issues, the mechanical stress levels of films is controlled and the cell oxide-nitride (ON) material is being optimized. To deal with the interference phenomenon between cells and charge loss that occur when more cells are stacked at a limited height, SK Hynix developed the isolated-charge trap nitride (isolated-CTN) structure to enhance reliability."

SK hynix Inc announced that it has started mass-production of 18 GB (gigabyte) LPDDR5 mobile DRAM, which offers the largest capacity in the industry. This product will be equipped in premium smartphones to support an optimal environment for games with high resolution image and also high quality videos. SK hynix also expects that application will continue expanding to include the latest technologies, including ultra-high-performance camera applications and artificial intelligence (AI).

"This product will improve the processing speed and image quality by expanding the data temporary storage space, as the capacity increases compared to the previous 16 GB product," an official from the company said. The new product runs at up to 6,400 Mbps (megabits-per-second), around 20% faster than the mobile DRAM (LPDDR5 with 5,500 Mbps) for existing smartphones, a data rate that is capable of transferring ten 5 GB FHD (Full-HD) movies per second.

The DRAM market exhibits a healthier and more balanced supply/demand relationship compared with the NAND Flash market because of its oligopolistic structure, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. The percentage distribution of DRAM supply bits by application currently shows that PC DRAM accounts for 13%, server DRAM 34%, mobile DRAM 40%, graphics DRAM 5%, and consumer DRAM (or specialty DRAM) 8%. Looking ahead to 1Q21, the DRAM market by then will have gone through an inventory adjustment period of slightly more than two quarters. Memory buyers will also be more willing to stock up because they want to reduce the risk of future price hikes. Therefore, DRAM prices on the whole will be constrained from falling further. The overall ASP of DRAM products is now forecasted to stay generally flat or slightly up for 1Q21.

Total NAND Flash revenue reached US$14.5 billion in 3Q20, a 0.3% increase QoQ, while total NAND Flash bit shipment rose by 9% QoQ, but the ASP fell by 9% QoQ, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. The market situation in 3Q20 can be attributed to the rising demand from the consumer electronics end as well as the recovering smartphone demand before the year-end peak sales season. Notably, in the PC market, the rise of distance education contributed to the growing number and scale of Chromebook tenders, but the increase in the demand for Chromebook devices has not led to a significant increase in NAND Flash consumption because storage capacity is rather limited for this kind of notebook computer. Moreover, clients in the server and data center segments had aggressively stocked up on components and server barebones during 2Q20 due to worries about the impact of the pandemic on the supply chain. Hence, their inventories reached a fairly high level by 3Q20. Clients are now under pressure to control and reduce their inventories during this second half of the year. With them scaling back procurement, the overall NAND Flash demand has also weakened, leading to a downward turn in the contract prices of most NAND Flash products.

SK hynix Inc. announced to launch world's first DDR5 DRAM. It is a high-speed and high-density product optimized for Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) as a next generation standard of DRAM. Since SK hynix announced the development of World's First 16 Gigabit (Gb) DDR5 DRAM on November 2018, the Company has provided its major partners including Intel with sample products, and has completed various tests and verification of its functions and compatibility. This will allow SK hynix to provide its customers with the products once the DDR5 market becomes active.

In the meantime, SK hynix has conducted joint-operation of on-site lab, system-level test, and simulation with System-on-Chip) (SoC) manufacturers to verify the functions of DDR5. Also, the Company validated compatibility of its DDR5 and the major components on DRAM module including register clock driver) (RCD), which affect DRAM performance, and power management integrated circuit) (PMIC). Through these verifications, SK hynix has been collaborating closely with its global partners.

NVIDIA still hasn't released their desktop RTX 3070 graphics cards (those are set for October 15th), and availability for the already-launched RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 is spotty at best. However, the company is obviously gearing up for release of mobile versions of their RTX 30-series; NVIDIA's graphics solutions are manufacturers' usual top picks, after all. The RTX 3070 Mobile (Max Q) has thus been pictured already in its Qualification Sample state, and there are some details that can be gleaned already.

Markings on the chip place this as GN20-E5-A1, which allegedly refers to the GA104 GPU which is expected to power the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti graphics cards. GDDR6 memory is confirmed (naturally), since markings on the memory chips, which are placed quite close towards the actual NVIDIA silicon, are Sk Hynix identified as H56C8H24AIR - the same employed on AMD's Radeon Pro 550M. The full GA104 GPU features 6,144 CUDA cores however, the desktop version has been confirmed as being shipped with 5,888 cores enabled out of those. It could be that NVIDIA plans to release the mobile version with the same cores (and likely at a reduced frequency for improved power efficiency), which would obviously equate to lower performance; or maybe NVIDIA will employ the full GA104 silicon with even more reduced frequencies for the same performance - with substantial power savings as the proverbial cherry on top. These last ideas are pure speculation, though; we'll have to wait a little while to confirm specs.

Ever since the Trump administration imposed sanctions against Huawei to stop it from purchasing parts from third-party vendors to bypass the ban announced back in May, some vendors continued to supply the company. So it seems like some Korean manufacturers will be joining the doings of the US government, and apply restrictions to Huawei. According to the reports of South Korean media outlets, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will be joining the efforts of the US government and the Trump administration to impose sanctions against Chinese technology giant - Huawei.

It is reported that on September 15th, both Samsung and SK Hynix will stop any shipments to Huawei, where Samsung already stopped efforts for creating any new shipments. SK Hynix is said to continue shipping DRAM and NAND Flash products until September 14th, a day before the new sanctions are applied. Until the 14th, Huawei will receive some additional chips from SK Hynix. And it is exactly SK Hynix who is said to be a big loser here. It is estimated that 41.2% of SK Hynix's H1 2020 revenue came from China, most of which was memory purchased for Huawei phones and tablets. If the company loses Huawei as a customer, it would mean that the revenue numbers will be notably lower.

The NAND Flash industry benefitted from strong demand for PCs and servers in 2Q20 as the COVID-19 pandemic caused a demand surge for cloud services and technologies that are related to working from home, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. This, in turn, kept demand high for SSDs. However, the smartphone and consumer electronics markets had not recovered from the impact of the pandemic. The demand for these products therefore declined compared to the previous quarter. In 2Q20, total NAND Flash bit shipment and ASP both experienced a minor increase of about 3% QoQ, while NAND Flash revenue reached US$14.5 billion, a 6.5% increase QoQ.

According to the latest DigiTimes Research report, it is said that Korean memory makers have experienced a surge in chip output value. Korean memory manufacturers are Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which both have seen a massive growth of 22.1% on a yearly basis and 13.9% sequentially in the second quarter of 2020. This is no small feat as the demand for memory in the smartphone industry has been slowed in that period due to the COVID pandemic, however, it was offset by strong demand from servers and notebooks. When the output of Korean memory giants is fused, Samsung and SK Hynix had combined revenue of KRW22.9 trillion or about 20.8 billion USD. The demand for memory is expected to continue its growth due to the 5G headset market.

SK hynix Inc., a global semiconductor supplier based in Korea, announced today the release of its newest PCIe SSD: the SK hynix Gold P31. The latest edition is the world's first 128-layer NAND flash-based consumer SSD and the company's first consumer-facing PCIe SSD launched in the United States under the SK hynix brand.

The Gold P31 is intended for all PC users with a particular focus on gamers, designers, and content creators. The drive supports the PCIe NVMe interface based on 4D NAND flash technology and is now available for purchase in 1 TB and 500 GB capacities on Amazon U.S. The Gold P31 offers best-in-class read speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s and write speeds of up to 3,200 MB/s. The drive is a reliable choice for gamers whose PCs must support long hours of play, as well as professional creators and designers for whom performance and stability is essential. The Gold P31's reliability has been tested and validated through 1,000 hours of high-temperature operating life tests (HTOL) with mean time between failures (MTBF) reaching 1.5 million hours. The SSD also comes with a five-year warranty.

SK hynix announced that it has started the full-scale mass-production of high-speed DRAM, 'HBM2E', only ten months after the Company announced the development of the new product in August last year. SK hynix's HBM2E supports over 460 GB (Gigabyte) per second with 1,024 I/Os (Inputs/Outputs) based on the 3.6 Gbps (gigabits-per-second) speed performance per pin. It is the fastest DRAM solution in the industry, being able to transmit 124 FHD (full-HD) movies (3.7 GB each) per second. The density is 16 GB by vertically stacking eight 16 Gb chips through TSV (Through Silicon Via) technology, and it is more than doubled from the previous generation (HBM2).

HBM2E boasts high-speed, high-capacity, and low-power characteristics; it is an optimal memory solution for the next-generation AI (Artificial Intelligence) systems including Deep Learning Accelerator and High-Performance Computing, which all require high-level computing performance. Furthermore, it is expected to be applied to the Exascale supercomputer - a high-performance computing system which can perform calculations a quintillion times per second - that will lead the research of next-generation basic and applied science, such as climate changes, bio-medics, and space exploration.

According to the latest investigations by the DRAMeXchange research division of TrendForce, NAND Flash bit shipment in 1Q20 was relatively on par with 4Q19. The overall ASP of NAND Flash products also climbed during the period. As a result, the global NAND Flash revenue for the quarter went up by 8.3% QoQ to US$13.6 billion.

In 1Q20, demand for enterprise SSDs exceeded supply because cloud service providers' procurement for data centers had been growing progressively since 4Q19. Also, inventories of NAND Flash suppliers mostly returned to normal during the period. Consequently, most NAND Flash products for the major applications experienced a rise in contract prices. As for the impact of COVID-19 during the Lunar New Year, TrendForce's investigations at the time found that the server supply chain managed to make a better recovery than the supply chains for notebook computers and smartphones. The impact of the outbreak on the storage demand from the cloud services sector was thus quite limited. On the other hand, the production of notebooks and smartphones was affected by logistical problems and breakage in the component supply chain. Because of this, notebook and smartphone manufacturers have gradually resumed production since March.

Thermaltake, the leading PC DIY premium brand for Cooling, Gaming Gear, and Enthusiast Memory solutions, proudly announced our high clock rate memory, the TOUGHRAM RGB DDR4 4600 MHz 16 GB Memory (2x8GB), which comes in both black and white versions. Besides the previous TOUGHRAM RGB 4000 MHz and TOUGHRAM RGB 4400 MHz Memory, we have now reached a new level, the TOUGHRAM line with a new higher clock rate of 4600 MHz in 16 GB (2x8GB) to ensure that we meet the users' needs. To provide high and stable gaming performance, all ICs are tightly-screened and coated with a ten-layer PCB.

Uniquely designed TT premium heat spreader with ten high lumens individual addressable LEDs not only dispatches heat faster but can allow users to show off 16.8 million colors with countless lighting combinations. Furthermore, users can use NeonMaker to customize and control the lighting effects, or even synchronized TOUGHRAM RGB DDR4 4600 MHz Memory with the TT RGB Plus software to maximize the control of RGB effects. TOUGHRAM RGB DDR4 4600 MHz Memory is also compatible with Intel Z490 and AMD X570 chipsets and supports Intel's XMP 2.0. If you're looking for high-quality, high functioning stable memory, choose TOUGHRAM RGB DDR4 4600 MHz.

GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY Co. Ltd, a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, announced today the launch of AORUS RGB MEMORY 4400 MHz. The all new design memory kit features the highly-praised Hynix D die, providing high bandwidth and high performance of DDR4 XMP 4400 MHz under 8 GB x2 mainstream specifications with a friendly price tag. The AORUS RGB MEMORY 4400 MHz is qualified by the high-end platform of INTEL Z490 and AMD X570, offering distinguished quality and stability with a lifetime warranty. Through RGB 2.0 support, users can create personal stylish lighting among DRAM and system components with balance of performance, budget, and fashion.

Following the innovation of computer platforms, the support of high memory XMP increases as well. GIGABYTE AORUS RGB MEMORY has won most credits consistently from the industry, and brings extra to the plate with the latest AORUS RGB MEMORY 4400 MHz 16 GB, with the specification of 8 GB x2 DDR4 XMP 4400 MHz and 19-26-26-46 timing. AORUS RGB MEMORY 4400 MHz 16 GB adopts Hynix D die which is the latest optimized option that memory overclockers highly recommend, and chose this level of product when purchasing. GIGABYTE implements this high quality material on AORUS RGB MEMORY 4400 MHz memory for overclockers who chase high memory frequency and enthusiasts can take full advantage of the various performance boosts.

Micron Technologies, in the latest earnings report, announced that they will start shipping High-Bandwidth Memory 2 (HBM2) DRAM. Used for high-performance graphics cards, server processors and all kinds of processors, HBM2 memory is wanted and relatively expensive solution, however, when Micron enters the market of its manufacturing, prices, and the market should adjust for the new player. Previously, only SK-Hynix and Samsung were manufacturing the HBM2 DRAM, however, Micron will join them and they will again form a "big-three" pact that dominates the memory market.

Up until now, Micron used to lay all hopes on its proprietary Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) DRAM type, which didn't gain much traction from customers and it never really took off. Only a few rare products used it, as Fujitsu SPARC64 XIfx CPU used in Fujitsu PRIMEHPC FX100 supercomputer introduced in 2015. Micron announced to suspend works on HMC in 2018 and decided to devote their efforts to GDDR6 and HBM development. So, as a result, we are seeing that they will launch HBM2 DRAM products sometime this year.

SK hynix Inc. today announced financial results for its fiscal year 2019 and fourth quarter ended on December 31, 2019. The consolidated revenue of fiscal year 2019 was KRW 26.99 trillion won while the operating profit amounted to 2.71 trillion won, and the net income 2.02 trillion won. Operating margin for the year was 10% and net margin was 7%.

In order to respond to changing market conditions, SK hynix proactively adjusted both investment and output level last year to maximize business management efficiency. However, amid increasing global economic uncertainty, the increase of inventory burden and conservative purchasing policies on the side of the customers led to a slowdown in demand as well as price falls. As a result, the Company's earnings decreased year-over-year (YoY).

Korean DRAM and NAND flash giant SK Hynix brought its latest memory innovations to the 2020 International CES. The star attraction at their booth was the "4D NAND" technology, and some of the first client-segment SSDs based on it. As a concept, 4D NAND surfaced way back in August 2018, and no, it doesn't involve the 4th dimension. Traditional 3D NAND chips use charge-trap flash (CTF) stacks spatially located next to a peripheral block that's responsible for wiring out all of those CTF stacks. In 4D NAND, the peripheral block is stacked along with the CTF stack itself, conserving real-estate on the 2-D plane (which can then be spent on increasing density). We caught two 128-layer 4D NAND-based client-segment drives inbound for 2020, the Platinum P31 M.2 NVMe, and Gold P31 M.2 NVMe. The already launched Gold S31 SATA drive was also there.

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it has developed 1Znm 16Gb (Gigabits) DDR4 (Double Data Rate 4) DRAM. As 16Gb is the industry's largest density for a single chip, the total memory capacity per wafer is also the largest of the existing DRAMs. The productivity of this product has improved by about 27% compared to the previous generation, 1Y nm. It does not require highly expensive extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, which gives it a competitive edge cost-wise.

The new 1Z nm DRAM also supports a data transfer rate of up to 3,200 Mbps, which is the fastest data processing speed in DDR4 interface. The Company significantly increased its power efficiency, successfully reducing power consumption by about 40% compared to modules of the same density made with 1Y nm 8 Gb DRAM.

China's semiconductor industry is seeking independence in every sector of its industry, with an emphasis of homemade products for domestic use, especially government facilities, where usage of homegrown products is most desirable. According to the report of China Securities Journal, Chinese firm has started production of DRAM memory.

A company named ChangXin Memory Technology, founded in 2016 to boost domestic silicon production, on Monday started production of DRAM memory, aiming to directly replace the current supply of foreign memory from companies like Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung. Being build using 18 nm technology which ChangXin calls "10-nanometer class" node, this DRAM chip isn't too far behind offers from competitors it tries to replace. Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix use 12, 14, and 16 nm nodes for production of their DRAM chips, so Chinese efforts so far are very good. The company promises to produce around 120.000 wafers per month and plans to deliver first chips by the end of this year.