Samsung Expands HBM Chip Production for AI Market

Samsung is gearing up for a significant milestone in the electronic components industry. According to reports from the KoreaTimes, the company plans to commence large-scale production of HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) chips in the latter half of 2023. This move comes as a response to the surging demand in the AI market and to catch up with SK Hynix, the current leader in HBM products.

As the AI services market continues to grow, these chips are integrated with GPUs and CPUs to enhance computing capabilities. However, HBM chips come with a higher price tag, approximately 2 to 3 times more expensive than traditional DRAM. Nonetheless, industry analysts predict that the applications of HBM will expand rapidly in the future. This is because AI computations require substantial data bandwidth, which can only be fulfilled by HBM memory.

Market data from Jibang Consulting, a research firm, reveals that in 2022, SK Hynix held a 50% market share in the HBM product market, followed by Samsung with 40% and Micron with 10%. However, HBM only constitutes a mere 1% of the entire DRAM market. Nevertheless, Jibang Consulting anticipates that HBM will experience an impressive annual growth rate of 45% from this year until 2025.

Foreign media reports suggest that Samsung's upcoming HBM3 memory chips will offer significant advancements. These chips will have capacities of 16GB and 24GB, operating at speeds up to 6.4Gbps. The increased performance of these chips will greatly enhance machine learning computations, resulting in faster processing speeds.

In April of this year, Samsung announced plans to launch HBM3P products in the second half of 2023. These new products will feature even higher performance and larger capacities. Additionally, Samsung is set to introduce other innovative offerings such as HBM-PIM chips and CXL DRAM chips.

Industry analysts from South Korea have revealed that Samsung aims to supply HBM3 chips to North American GPU manufacturers, with NVIDIA speculated as one of the key players. This strategic move is expected to boost the revenue generated by these types of chips, projecting a significant increase from 6% to 18% of Samsung's total DRAM sales by 2024.