[News] SK hynix and Samsung Reportedly Step up Focus on HBM4 and CXL amid Rising Chinese Competition

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Ahead of SK hynix’s Q3 earnings announcement on October 24^th, the market expects it may see a surge in quarterly operating profit driven by HBM, potentially leading the company to outperform Samsung’s semiconductor division. Therefore, there is growing interest in SK hynix’s next move.

In order to maintain its leadership in the memory sector amid heated competition from China, SK hynix is reportedly shifting its focus to high-value technologies such as HBM4 and Compute Express Link (CXL), according to Korean media outlet Pinpoint News and Tom’s Hardware.

This shift is motivated by a highly competitive memory market, where Chinese firms are ramping up their production capabilities and adopting aggressive pricing strategies to gain share, Tom’s Hardware notes.

For instance, a previous report by ZDNet mentions that Chinese memory manufacturers like CXMT (Changxin Memory Technologies) are aggressively expanding production, which could negatively affect profitability in the traditional DRAM market. Established in 2016, CXMT has become China’s largest DRAM producer with government backing.

Both Samsung and SK hynix are said to be closely monitoring these developments, and counting on high-valued technologies like HBM4 and CXL to unlock a new wave of growth momentum.

It is worth noting that both memory giants have teamed up with TSMC on HBM4, as they attempt to incorporate customized features requested by major clients, counting on TSMC to manufacture more powerful logic dies, the component that functions as the brain of an HBM chip.

Per SK hynix’s product roadmap, the company plans to launch 12-layer stacked HBM4 in the second half of 2025 and 16-layer in 2026.

Samsung, which is struggling with the 12-Hi HBM3e verification with NVIDIA, also aims high for HBM4 to turn the tide. A previous report by The Elec indicates that Samsung targets to tape out HBM4 by year-end, while eyeing the mass production by the end of 2025.

On the other hand, CXL is a next-generation interface that efficiently connects CPUs, GPUs, and memory in high-performance computing systems. According to Pinpoint News, by applying CXL to existing memory modules, capacities can be expanded by more than ten times, makes it extremely suited for the demand of the AI era.

SK hynix is also focusing on CXL memory, which is gaining attention as the next-generation AI memory following HBM. Citing SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung’s remarks, a report by ZDNet suggests that the memory giant plans to launch products like CXL and LPCAMM tailored to customers’ needs, as the results will begin to materialize around next year.

In the meantime, Samsung reportedly aims to begin mass production of a 256GB CMM-D, compatible with the CXL 2.0 protocol, by the end of 2024, according to Tom’s Hardware. In its own words, Samsung’s CMM-D is a memory expander built with next-generation CXL technology, which seamlessly connects multiple processors and devices, increasing memory capacity thus optimizing memory management.

Read more

• [News] Samsung’s Next Move? Early HBM4 Mass-production and 2nm Foundry Solutions Could Be the Cure
• [News] SK hynix Reportedly to Tape-out HBM4 in October, Paving the Way for NVIDIA’s Rubin

(Photo credit: SK hynix)