SK hynix announces development of 16-layer HBM3E

SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung speaks during the 2024 SK AI Summit at Gangnam District, Seoul, Nov. 4. Yonhap SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung said Monday his company will produce the industry's first 48-gigabyte, 16-layer high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips early next year, reinforcing its leadership in the artificial intelligence (AI) chip market.

"The market for 16-high HBM is expected to open up from the next-generation HBM4," Kwak said in a speech at SK AI Summit in Seoul. "SK hynix has been developing 48GB 16-high HBM3E in a bid to secure technological stability and plans to provide samples to customers early next year." This is the first official announcement from SK hynix regarding the development of 16-layer HBM3E chips.



HBM is a high-performance DRAM in high demand, particularly for U.S. AI chip giant Nvidia's graphics processing units, which are key components for AI computing.

"The 16-high products will improve performance by 18 percent in training and 32 percent in inference compared with the 12-layer versions," the CEO said. SK hynix began supplying eight-layer HBM3E to Nvidia in March and mass producing the latest 12-layer HBM3E products in September. The company expects to begin shipping the 16-layer HBM3E products in the first half of next year, followed by next-generation HBM4 chips in the second half.

Kwak noted SK hynix plans to apply the advanced mass reflow-molded underfill (MR-MUF) process, previously used for its 12-layer products, to manufacture the 16-layer HBM3E chips. The MR-MUF is a packaging technology that the Korean chipmaker first implemented with HBM2E in 2019. "From the HBM4 generation, SK hynix plans to adopt logic process on base die through collaboration with a top global logic foundry to provide customers with the best products," added Kwak, referring to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, better known as TSMC.

In recent market reports, SK hynix led the global HBM market last year with a 53 percent market share, followed by Samsung Electronics at 38 percent and Micron Technology at 9 percent. (Yonhap).