Samsung Electronics HBM Key Player: "Customized Products Are the Bridgehead to the AGI Era"

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"Customized High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is the first step in the co-optimization of processors and memory and serves as a bridge to the era of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)."

Kim Kyung-ryun, Executive Vice President of Samsung Electronics' Product Planning Office, said this in an interview with the company's newsroom on the 18th. He is a key figure who worked hard until Samsung Electronics unveiled its high-capacity 5th generation HBM product, ‘HBM3E 12H (12-stack)’, last February.

Kim Kyung-ryun, Executive Director of Product Planning Office, Samsung Electronics / Photo by Samsung Electronics

Executive Vice President Kim pointed out the necessity of customized HBM, saying, "There was an industry consensus that it would be difficult to achieve innovation in the AGI era if processor and memory companies optimize their products individually." To this end, he said, "We will respond by leveraging the company's capabilities in memory, foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing), and systems, and we have also formed a dedicated next-generation HBM team."

Samsung Electronics announced a strategy to promote platformization for customized HBM, maximizing the common design parts. They also plan to expand the HBM ecosystem partners to establish a system that can efficiently respond to customization demands.

Executive Vice President Kim predicted that as the HBM market matures, not only ‘customization’ but also the keywords ‘segmentation’ and ‘power wall’ will become important.

In the early days of HBM, hardware versatility was important, but in the future, as services become more advanced centered on killer apps, the hardware infrastructure will go through a segmentation process optimized for each service, he explained. Samsung Electronics plans to respond by unifying the core die and diversifying packages and base dies such as 8H (8-stack) and 12H.

To solve the power wall caused by increased power consumption from improved processor and memory performance under limited total system power, technological innovation will be pursued. The upcoming HBM4 will introduce a base die applying logic processes and change the packaging method from the existing 2.5D to 3D. This means evolving in a direction where DRAM cells and logic are more integrated.

Yoon Jae-yoon, Executive Director of DRAM Development Office at Samsung Electronics / Photo by Samsung Electronics

Samsung Electronics has already started discussions with customers and partners to realize these innovations. They plan to proactively respond to related demands and open the market going forward.

Yoon Jae-yoon, Executive Vice President of Samsung Electronics' DRAM Development Office and another key figure in the development of HBM3E 12H, said in the same interview, "We will introduce up to 16H (16-stack) in the next-generation HBM4 with NCF (Non-Conductive Film) assembly technology optimized for high-temperature thermal characteristics and cutting-edge process technology."