[Special Stock] Neosem, World's Only CXL Mass Production Equipment Valuation Rises... 'Surpasses Competitors Worth Trillions'

The market for the next-generation memory technology Compute Express Link (CXL), which is gaining attention as a complement and alternative to the drawbacks of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), is expected to grow significantly. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are actively expanding the CXL ecosystem. The competition to dominate the CXL market is fierce.

At 10:07 AM on the 26th, Neosem was trading at 9,700 KRW, up 12.53% from the previous day.

CXL has similar functions and roles to HBM, such as enhancing the performance of memory required for computation. However, its method is more efficient and less expensive. While HBM stacks multiple DRAM chips vertically to increase bandwidth and boost computation speed, CXL expands memory capacity simply by adding modules, thereby accelerating computation.

Industry experts predict that the launch of CXL products will signal the dawn of the ‘post-HBM’ era. If CXL demonstrates sufficient potential, the use of HBM is expected to gradually decline. Subsequently, DRAMs evolved enough to perform ‘chiplet’ and computation functions are expected to emerge one after another, potentially replacing HBM in all aspects including functionality, influence, and performance, leading the semiconductor market into a new phase.

According to the industry, Samsung Electronics is accelerating efforts to mass-produce the 256-gigabyte (GB) module CMM-D based on CXL 2.0 version in the second half of this year. Samsung, which had lost its lead to SK Hynix in HBM, is said to have been determined to make a comeback in CXL. The company has been focusing on developing CXL intensively for over 10 years.

SK Hynix has integrated the key functions of 'HMSDK,' CXL memory operation optimization software, into Linux, the world’s largest open-source operating system. This is seen as recognition not only of their ultra-high-performance hardware memory like HBM but also of their software competitiveness.

Neosem succeeded in commercializing the world’s first CLX (1.1) memory inspection equipment in 2023 and supplied it to customers. They also developed and commercialized CXL (2.0) memory inspection equipment for the first time worldwide. On July 4th, they made the initial delivery of mass production equipment to customers. They moved faster than global test equipment companies such as Japan’s Advantest and the U.S.’s Teradyne, as well as domestic competitor Exicon. Additional supply is expected when production volume increases in the future. It is also evaluated that they have established a large-scale order foothold for the CXL 3.0 era, which is expected to see significant market expansion.

As of the end of the first half of this year, Neosem is the only company worldwide capable of supplying inspection equipment necessary for mass production of CXL memory. The company explained that competitors have not even entered the demo stage yet.