?Samsung is taking a two-track approach to its development of high-bandwidth memory (HBM).

SK hynix said that the ZUFS 4.0, optimized for on-device AI from mobile devices such as smartphones, is the industry’s best of its kind. The company expects the latest product to help expand its AI memory leadership to the NAND space, extending its success in the high-performance DRAM represented by HBM.

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it recorded 12.43 trillion won in revenues, 2.886 trillion won in operating profit (with an operating margin of 23%), and 1.917 trillion won in net profit (with a net margin of 15%) in the first quarter.

Samsung has begun sampling its HBM3E 12H to customers and mass production is slated for the first half of this year.

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are planning to mass-produce GDDR7 DRAM, a next-generation DRAM for graphics cards, within the first half of this year. GDDR7 DRAM, which is mainly used in Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) -- a core of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) era -- is expected to continue South Korea’s dominance in the semiconductor industry following High Bandwidth Memory (HBM).

South Korea will designate high bandwidth memory (HBM), the technology incorporated into artificial intelligence (AI) chips, as a national strategic technology and will give tax benefits to developers of the technology such as Samsung Electronics Co. and SK hynix Inc.

SK hynix held a press conference titled?“Memory, the Power of AI”?on the sidelines of CES 2024 in Las Vegas where its CEO Kwak Noh-Jung laid out the company’s vision in the AI era.

The global HBM market, presently dominated by Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, is projected to grow from approximately 2.5 trillion won this year to about 8 trillion won by 2028.

According to industry officials on Dec. 18, SK hynix announced at the IEDM 2023, a global semiconductor conference held in the U.S. this month, that it has secured reliability for the Hybrid Bonding process used in HBM manufacturing.

CMM, short for CXL Memory Module, is a memory specification based on CXL by the international semiconductor standardization organization JEDEC. Inside Samsung, CXL is commonly referred to as CMM.

According to industry sources on Nov. 26, SK hynix is preparing to integrate 2.5D Fan-out packaging technology into its next generation of DRAM after HBM.

Samsung Electronics is developing Low Latency Wide IO (LLW) DRAM, with mass production targeted by the end of next year.

The market for the next-generation HBM3E, a high-performance semiconductor for artificial intelligence within the High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) sector, is heating up. As Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and Micron all gear up to mass-produce 5th generation HBM3E, the competition is expected to intensify.

According to industry sources on Oct. 17, Samsung Electronics is sending Shinebolt prototypes, a product of HBM3E, to client companies for quality approval tests. The prototype stacks 24 gigabit (Gb) chips in 8 layers, and it is reportedly soon to finish the development of a 36 gigabyte (GB) product with 12 layers.

Samsung commercialized HBM for high-performance computing (HPC) in 2016 for the first time in the world.