[News] Samsung Reportedly Speeds up HBM4 by 6 Months, as NVIDIA Plans Early Rubin Launch in Q3

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Is U.S. chip giant NVIDIA planning to launch the Rubin lineup early? The speculation now seems to turn into reality. As per South Korean media outlet New Daily, following SK hynix’s footsteps, Samsung is also accelerating the development of HBM4, as it targets to complete the Production Readiness Approval (PRA) process within the first half of 2025.

Notably, at CES 2025 last week, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won confirmed the company’s positive advancements in next-gen HBMs, saying that its chip development has now outpaced NVIDIA’s demands. In November, 2024, media reports indicated that NVIDIA had asked SK hynix to speed up its delivery time for HBM4 by six months.

The aggressive move of Samsung and SK hynix, as per the report, is likely to be spurred by NVIDIA’s accelerated timeline for Rubin. The New Daily report suggests that NVIDIA had initially planned to launch Rubin in 2026, but it is now expected to move up the release to the third quarter of 2025.

Citing an industry source on 13^th, the report notes that Samsung plans to finalize the development of HBM4 and complete the PRA, the final step before mass production, by mid-year, indicating that it intends to advance its HBM roadmap by about six months to align with NVIDIA’s product schedule.

It is worth noting that Samsung’s HBM3E is still struggling to pass NVIDIA’s verification. As per Korea JoongAng Daily, NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang noted that Samsung must develop a “new design” to pass NVIDIA’s qualification. “But they can do it, and they are working very fast,” Huang added.

Originally, Samsung planned to begin mass production of HBM3E in the first half of 2025. However, it now seems that speeding up the development of HBM4 has become the top priority for memory giants.

A previous report from ZDNet noted that Samsung did make good progress on 1c DRAM, which is critical for HBM4 core die production, as it reportedly secured “good dies” (fully functional chips) for the first time in the third quarter of 2024.

Read more

• [News] SK Chair Meets with Jensen Huang, Highlighting HBM Developments Exceeding NVIDIA’s Requests
• [News] Samsung Reportedly Starts Trial Production of HBM4 Logic Die with In-house 4nm, Challenging SK hynix

(Photo credit: NVIDIA)