SK Hynix plans 30x improvement on HBM with custom variants

Technology News | August 26, 2024

By Peter Clarke

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Ryu Seong-su, vice president of SK Hynix, has announced plans for his company to develop products with 30x the performance of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) DRAM, and offer customer-specific products, according to Business Korea.

Ryu spoke at the SK Icheon Forum 2024 held in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, on August 19 and said: “We aim to develop products with 20 to 30 times the performance of current HBM, focusing on introducing differentiated products,” Business Korea reported.

JEDEC preps finalization of HBM4 standard

SK Hynix has taken a strong position in the DRAM market through early mover advantage in HBM, which is format adopted by Nvidia and others for AI processor cards and systems. It is now clearly eager to maintain or widen its advantage over other players such as Samsung and Micron.

Ryu indicated that the market may now take a turn towards customized private memory architectures and physical formats. He said that SK Hynix has received approaches from the “magnificent seven,” which comprises US tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, and Tesla.

Custom-HBM

“All members of the magnificent seven, major US big tech companies, have approached us requesting custom HBM solutions,” Business Korea quoted Ryu saying. “I worked non-stop over the weekend communicating with M7 companies. A lot of engineering resources are required internally to meet their requests, and we are making extensive efforts to secure them.”

SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron are all introducing HBM3E DRAMs with plans to introduce the HBM4 format in 2025.

Ryu also said that SK Hynix needs to define memory specifications rather than following others. “We need to create our own (memory semiconductor) specifications rather than following specific companies.”

“We are at a significant turning point in the HBM paradigm, with increasing demands for custom products. We will continue to develop the memory business by seizing these opportunities,” he concluded reports Business Korea.