Sk Hynix Vice President Lee Seonghun: "Unprecedented Challenges in the Next 10 Years... Data Collaboration Is Needed"

Keynote Speech at SEMICON Korea 2026
"Breaking Through the Memory Technology Inflection Point with AI"

On the 11th, Lee Seonghun, Vice President of SK hynix, said that the memory industry, including DRAM and NAND, will face an unprecedented level of difficulty, and proposed industry-wide data collaboration and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as alternatives.

Lee Seonghun, vice president of SK Hynix, is delivering a keynote speech at 'Semicon Korea 2026' held at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul on the 11th. Photo by Jang Bokyung

In his keynote speech at "SEMICON Korea 2026" held at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on this day, Vice President Lee said, "Over the next 10 years, the memory industry will face a level of technological difficulty that it has never experienced before," adding, "We will not be able to maintain the development cadence with the way we have done things in the past."

He stressed, "Ultimately, the competitiveness of memory semiconductors lies in launching good products in the market in a timely manner," and added, "The most critical issue is keeping up with the technology development cycle."

Vice President Lee believes that the technological burden is surging for both DRAM and NAND. For DRAM, he said that, beyond scaling, bonding technology, vertical channels, and 3D stacking schemes are all being anticipated, while for NAND, after the transition to 3D stacking, the industry is already facing new challenges such as lateral scaling and process burdens arising from high aspect ratios.

SK hynix expects this trend to accelerate and plans to respond to the rising level of technological difficulty by shifting to AI-based research and development (R&D). SK hynix has already introduced AI into the material exploration process, reducing the time required to identify suitable materials to about one four-hundredth of the previous level.

As another solution, he proposed data sharing based on cooperation between companies. Vice President Lee said, "Given the nature of the semiconductor industry, it is true that we take a conservative approach to data sharing," but added, "The industry needs to think together about how we will share data."