[News] SK hynix, TSMC, and NVIDIA Reportedly Forge Alliance to Develop Next-Generation HBM

According to a report from BusinessKorea, memory giant SK hynix is deepening its collaboration with TSMC and NVIDIA, and will announce a closer partnership at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in September.

SK hynix has been collaborating with TSMC for many years. In 2022, TSMC announced the establishment of the OIP 3DFabric Alliance at its North America Technology Symposium, incorporating partners in memory and packaging.

At that time, Kangwook Lee, Senior Vice President and PKG Development Lead at SK hynix, revealed that the company has been closely working with TSMC on previous generations and current high-bandwidth memory (HBM) technologies, supporting compatibility with the CoWoS process and HBM interconnectivity.

After joining the 3DFabric Alliance, SK hynix reportedly plans to deepen its collaboration with TSMC to develop solutions for the next generation of HBM, looking to achieve innovations in system-level products.

SK hynix President, Justin Kim, is reportedly said to be delivering a keynote speech at the International Semiconductor Exhibition in Taipei in September, marking SK hynix’s first participation in such a keynote address. Following the speech, Kim will engage in discussions with senior executives from TSMC, possibly including NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, to discuss collaborative plans for the next generation of HBM. This move is expected to further solidify the trilateral alliance between SK hynix, TSMC, and NVIDIA.

Notably, the collaboration among the three giants was hinted in the first half of this year. On April 25th, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won traveled to Silicon Valley to meet with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, potentially related to these strategies.

Reportedly, SK hynix will adopt TSMC’s logic process to manufacture the base die for HBM (High Bandwidth Memory). Reports indicate that SK hynix and TSMC have agreed to collaborate on the development and production of HBM4, scheduled for mass production in 2026.

HBM stacks core chips vertically on the base die, which are interconnected. While SK hynix currently produces HBM3e using its own process for the base die, it will switch to TSMC’s advanced logic process for HBM4. The same report further suggested that SK hynix will highlight achievements at forums, including achieving more than a 20% reduction in power consumption compared to initial targets for HBM4.

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(Photo credit: SK hynix)