Samsung retakes initiative in global HBM war...HBM4 World's First Production

*This content was translated by AI.

Samsung Electronics has started full-fledged market competition by mass-producing the world's first industry-leading HBM4 (6th generation high-bandwidth memory) to Nvidia.

Samsung Electronics announced on the 12th that it has set performance targets that exceed the standards of JEDEC (International Standard Organization of Semiconductor Industries) since the beginning of HBM4 development and has secured stable yield and performance from the beginning of mass production without redesigning by introducing the best process 1c DRAM (10 nano-class 6th generation).

"Samsung Electronics' HBM4 has applied the best process such as 1c DRAM and foundry 4nano, breaking the precedent of applying the previously verified process," said Hwang Sang-joon, vice president of memory development at Samsung Electronics. "By securing enough room for performance expansion through process competitiveness and design improvement, we were able to meet our customers' demand for performance increase in a timely manner."

Sumseong Electronics said its HBM4 has secured a stable operating speed of 11.7Gbps, which is about 46% higher than the JEDEC industry standard of 8Gbps (8Gbps per second). The figure is about 1.22 times better than the previous fifth-generation HBM3E's maximum pin speed of 9.6Gbps. Samsung Electronics' HBM4 can be implemented up to 13Gbps.

In addition, the total memory bandwidth based on a single stack was raised to up to 3.3 TB/s (terabytes per second), about 2.7 times better than the previous HBM3E, securing performance above the customer's demand of 3.0 TB/s.

Samsung Electronics' HBM4 is 24GB (gigabyte) through 12-layer stacking technologyIt provides 36GB of capacity and plans to expand its capacity to up to 48GB by applying 16-layer stacking technology according to the customer's product schedule. The HBM4 16-speed 48GB is made by stacking 16 3GB DRAMs.

Samsung Electronics said it has applied low-power design technology to core dies to solve power consumption and heat concentration problems caused by the expansion of the number of data transmission I/O (a doorway for exchanging data between memory and graphics processing devices) from 1,024 to 2048.

In addition, we have improved energy efficiency by approximately 40% compared to previous generations through the application of silicon through electrode (TSV) data transmission/reception low-voltage design techniques and power distribution network (PDN) optimization. The thermal resistance characteristic was improved by about 10% and the heat dissipation characteristic by about 30%. As a customer, you can get the effect of reducing power consumption and cooling costs by server and data center units.

In the future, Samsung Electronics plans to lead the market by saying that it is the only comprehensive semiconductor company in the world that can provide a "one-stop solution" that covers △ logic △ memory △ pound (consignment production) △ packaging. In particular, it plans to increase quality and yield through close collaboration between its own foundry process and HBM design.

"We are preemptively expanding our HBM4 production capacity, believing that our HBM sales will more than triple in 2026 compared to 2025," Samsung Electronics said. "Based on the industry's largest DRAM production capacity and clean rooms that have been secured through preemptive infrastructure investment, we have the production capacity to respond flexibly within a short period of time even if demand for HBM expands." The Pyeongtaek Plant Complex 2 Line 5, which will be fully operational from 2028, will be used as a key base for HBM production.

Next-generation HBM4E, which has increased operating speed and power efficiency, is also being prepared. Samples will be sent in the second half of this year. Custom HBMs tailored to the specifications of each customer will also ship samples sequentially from 2027.

Meanwhile, SK Hynix is also planning to mass-produce HBM4 to Nvidia and other companies soon.

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*This content was translated by AI.