Samsung Electronics: "In the AI Era, Memory with HBM Alone Is Not Enough"

President Lee Jung-bae's Keynote Speech at 'Semicon Taiwan'
"Memory Bandwidth Limits AI Model Performance"
"High-Performance, High-Capacity SSDs Are Needed"

Lee Jung-bae, President of Samsung Electronics Memory Business Division, presented a vision necessary for innovation in memory technology and the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) during his keynote speech at the global semiconductor industry exhibition 'Semicon Taiwan 2024' held in Taipei, Taiwan on the 4th. He particularly emphasized that the company has established competitiveness as a comprehensive semiconductor company encompassing the semiconductor ecosystem beyond high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in the AI era.

Lee Jung-bae, President of Samsung Electronics Memory Division, is delivering a keynote speech at SEMICON Taiwan 2024 held in Taipei, Taiwan on the 4th. Photo by Samsung Electronics [Image source=Yonhap News]

First, President Lee identified three challenges faced by memory in the AI era: a sharp increase in power consumption, memory wall (bottleneck phenomenon), and insufficient storage capacity. He explained, "With the emergence of generative AI, the number of model parameters has surged, increasing the power consumption required for AI training," adding, "Although the computational power of graphics processing units (GPUs) has greatly increased, memory bandwidth has not increased at the same level, which can limit the performance of AI models." He further noted, "More storage capacity is needed for AI data processing, necessitating high-performance, high-capacity solid-state drives (SSDs)."

President Lee stated, "To address these challenges, Samsung is focusing on developing high-performance, low-power products and on-device AI dedicated solutions while introducing memory architecture," emphasizing, "Collaboration with customers and partners is essential to achieve this."

He also highlighted Samsung Electronics' strengths by saying, "There are limitations to cloud-based AI alone as AI evolves, and the development of on-device AI is essential," and added, "Excelling only in HBM is not enough; a diverse product lineup including on-device AI solutions and large-capacity storage is necessary."

Furthermore, he said, "There are limits to improving HBM performance with existing memory processes alone," and explained, "To solve this, logic technology must be combined, and Samsung Electronics holds the strongest position in this field by owning foundry and system LSI capabilities in-house."

President Lee concluded, "Samsung Electronics will pioneer the future of AI and memory technology in collaboration with industry leaders," and stated, "We will continue to lead technological innovation through close cooperation with partners and strengthen our leadership in the AI memory market."