[News] Samsung Reportedly Establishes New HBM Team, Looking to Improve AI Chip Yield

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Samsung Electronics Co. has recently established a HBM team within its memory division, with the goal of enhancing yield during the development of the sixth-generation AI memory HBM4 and the AI accelerator Mach-1.

According to a report of the Korea Economic Daily (KED) citing industry sources on March 29th, Samsung’s HBM team is primarily responsible for the research, development, and sales of DRAM and NAND flash memory. Samsung’s Executive Vice President and Chief of DRAM Product and Technology, Hwang Sang-joon, will lead the new team. This marks the second team focused on HBM since Samsung initiated its HBM task force in January.

Per KED’s report, Samsung is stepping up its efforts in hopes of surpassing SK Hynix, the leader in the advanced HBM field. In 2019, Samsung dissolved its HBM team due to a mistaken belief that the market would not see significant growth.

Per a previous TrendForce press release, the three major original HBM manufacturers held market shares as follows in 2023: SK Hynix and Samsung were both around 46-49%, while Micron stood at roughly 4-6%.

To vie for dominance in the AI chip market, Samsung is pursuing a “two-track” strategy by concurrently developing two cutting-edge memory chips: HBM and Mach-1.

According to TrendForce’s report, SK Hynix led the way with its HBM3e validation in the first quarter, closely followed by Micron, which plans to start distributing its HBM3e products toward the end of the first quarter, in alignment with NVIDIA’s planned H200 deployment by the end of the second quarter.

Samsung, slightly behind in sample submissions, is expected to complete its HBM3e validation by the end of the first quarter, with shipments rolling out in the second quarter.

According to the same report from KED, Samsung is also gearing up to develop the next-generation accelerator, “Mach-2,” tailored for AI inference. According to Kyung on March 29th, Samsung must expedite the development of Mach-2 as there is strong interest from customers in this regard.

Read more

• [News] Memory Manufacturers Vie for HBM3e Market
• [News] Another Semiconductor Giant Makes a Move on HBM

(Photo credit: Samsung)