[Special Stock] YC Chem, SK Hynix World's First Mass Production of 5th Gen HBM 12-Stack... Emphasis on Domestic TSV Development↑

YC Chem is showing strong performance. This is interpreted as being influenced by the news that SK Hynix has succeeded in mass-producing the 12-layer 5th generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) 3E for the first time in the world.

As of 9:44 AM on the 26th, YC Chem is trading at 19,100 KRW, up 8.41% compared to the previous day.

According to industry sources, on this day SK Hynix announced that it has become the first in the world to mass-produce the 12-layer HBM3E with the largest capacity among existing HBMs, 36GB (gigabytes), and will start supplying products to major customers within the year. The HBM3E 12-layer is expected to be used in NVIDIA’s cutting-edge high-performance AI semiconductors such as the B200A and GB200A. This comes about six months after delivering HBM3E to NVIDIA in March.

SK Hynix stated that the HBM3E 12-layer product is world-class in all aspects essential for AI memory, including speed, capacity, and stability. The operating speed is 9.6Gbps, the highest speed among existing memories. In particular, it significantly increases speed in AI training. The company explained that when running Meta’s large language model (LLM) ‘LLaMA 3 70B’ on a single GPU equipped with four of SK Hynix’s new products, it can read all 7 billion parameters 35 times per second.

SK Hynix also announced that it succeeded in stacking 12 layers without increasing thickness. It increased capacity by 50% by stacking twelve 3GB DRAM chips with the same thickness as the existing 8-layer product. The key was making the DRAM single chips 40% thinner than before and stacking them vertically using silicon through-silicon via (TSV) technology. SK Hynix explained that it also solved structural problems caused by stacking thinner chips higher by improving heat dissipation performance by 10% compared to the previous generation.

Meanwhile, YC Chem has localized photoresist for TSV and supplies it to domestic semiconductor companies. It counts both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix as customers, with more than 70% of its sales coming from SK Hynix.

The TSV process is advantageous for securing space because it can directly connect chips vertically, and its small size allows for fast learning and processing of vast amounts of data, making it an essential process for HBM manufacturing.