The head of artificial intelligence (AI) computing giant Nvidia Corp asked South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc to speed up delivery of newer, more advanced HBM4 chips by six months, SK Group said yesterday.
Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) made the request amid a global shortage of crucial advanced chips, which SK Hynix has pledged to work on with fellow market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電).
SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest memorychip maker, is racing to meet explosive demand for the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips that are used to process vast amounts of data to train AI, including from Nvidia, which dominates the market.
Photo: Bloomberg
“The current pace of HBM memory technology development and product launches is impressive, but AI still requires higher-performance memory,” Huang said by video link at an AI summit in Seoul.
Last month, SK Hynix said that it was on course to deliver the 12-layer HBM4 chips by the second half of next year.
SK Hynix yesterday said that it would ship samples of the first-ever 16-layer HBM3E chips by early next year, as it seeks to bolster its growing AI chip dominance.
“Nvidia is demanding more HBM as it releases better chip versions every year,” SK Group chief executive officer Chey Tae-won said.
It was a “happy challenge” which kept the company busy, he added.
The company said it was mass-producing the world’s first 12-layer HBM3E product in September, and aims to ship samples to clients of the newer, more advanced products quickly.
The additional layers add more bandwidth speed, power efficiency and improve the total capacity of the chips.
“SK Hynix has been preparing for various ‘world first’ products by being the first in the industry to develop and start volume shipping,” SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung said.
“SK Hynix has been developing 48GB [gigabyte] 16-high HBM3E in a bid to secure technological stability and plans to provide samples to customers early next year,” he added.
In 2013, SK Hynix launched the first HBM chips — cutting-edge semiconductors that enable faster data processing and the more complex tasks of generative AI.
Rival Samsung Electronics Co has been lagging behind SK Hynix when it comes to HBM chips, and the market capitalization gap between Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix reached its narrowest level in 13 years last month.
SK Hynix’s shares yesterday rose 6.48 percent, while Samsung Electronics increased 0.69 percent.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS