According to industry sources on May 28, the domestic semiconductor materials company ENF Technology has developed titanium etchant (Ti etchant) using its own technology and has started supplying this material to the world’s largest HBM manufacturer.

SK hynix has announced that the yield (ratio of good chips) of their fifth-generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) HBM3E is nearing 80%.

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have significantly increased their research and development (R&D) and facility investments in the first quarter of this year. Samsung Electronics reported its highest first-quarter R&D investment ever.

On May 14, at a European technology symposium held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, TSMC unveiled details about its sixth-generation HBM4 for the first time. TSMC disclosed that it is considering 12-nanometer (nm) and 5-nm processes for the production of logic dies that will be used in HBM4, effectively offering to customize and supply HBM4 based on client performance requirements.

SK Hynix is planning to start mass production of HBM4E in 2026, a company research said.

In an impressive display of economic resilience, the Korea Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry recorded a growth rate in exports over 30% for the first time since March 2022 fueled by strong performances in key segments such as semiconductors.

?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.