[News] SK Hynix Revealed Progress for HBM3e, Achieving Nearly 80% Yield

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SK hynix has disclosed yield details regarding the company’s 5^th generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), HBM3e, for the first time. According to a report from the Financial Times, citing Kwon Jae-soon, the head of yield at SK hynix, the memory giant has successfully reduced the time needed for mass production of HBM3e chips by 50%, while close to achieving the target yield of 80%.

This is better than the industry’s previous speculation, which estimated the yield of SK Hynix’s HBM3e to be between 60% and 70%, according to a report by Business Korea.

According to TrendForce’s analysis earlier, NVIDIA’s upcoming B100 or H200 models will incorporate advanced HBM3e, while the current HBM3 supply for NVIDIA’s H100 solution is primarily met by SK hynix, leading to a supply shortfall in meeting burgeoning AI market demands.

The challenge, however, is the supply bottleneck caused by both CoWoS packaging constraints and the inherently long production cycle of HBM—extending the timeline from wafer initiation to the final product beyond two quarters.

The report by Business Korea noted that HBM manufacturing involves stacking multiple DRAMs vertically, which presents greater process complexity compared to standard DRAM. Specifically, the yield of the silicon via (TSV), a critical process of HBM3e, has been low, ranging from 40% to 60%, posing a significant challenge for improvement.

In terms of SK hynix’s future roadmap for HBM, CEO Kwak Noh-Jung announced on May 2nd that the company’s HBM capacity for 2024 and 2025 has almost been fully sold out. According to Business Korea, SK hynix commenced delivery of 8-layer HBM3e products in March and plans to supply 12-layer HBM3e products in the third quarter of this year. The 12-layer HBM4 (sixth-generation) is scheduled for next year, with the 16-layer version expected to enter production by 2026.

Read more

• [News] Samsung and SK Hynix Urgently Reallocate 20% of DRAM Production Capacity to Support Rising HBM demand
• [News] SK Hynix Accelerates HBM4E Development, Aiming for Mass Production by 2026

 

(Photo credit: SK hynix)