Recently, it was reported that Samsung Electronics has decided to join hands with TSMC, a leader in the foundry field, to jointly develop the next generation of buffer-free high-bandwidth memory (HBM4). The partnership, which was announced by TSMC's top executives at the Semicon Taiwan 2024 forum earlier, marks the alliance between the two tech giants in the field of cutting-edge memory technology.
Currently, the three giants of the global memory market – SK hynix, Samsung, and Micron – are competing fiercely for the market opportunity to be the first to launch HBM4 in 2025. According to Korea's Korea Economic Daily, Samsung chose to cooperate with TSMC for the first time to promote the production of a new generation of memory. Dan Kochpatcharin, head of TSMC's ecosystem and alliance management, revealed at the Semicon Taiwan 2024 forum that the HBM4 memory jointly developed by the two parties will surpass HBM3 in performance, improving energy efficiency by up to 40%, while latency is expected to be reduced by 10%.
HBM technology offers significant advantages over traditional single-plane DRAM, enabling higher data processing speeds. This is done by vertically stacking multiple DRAM chips via through-silicon (TSV) and bump technology, resulting in a significant increase in data bandwidth. HBM is favored in fields such as artificial intelligence, where the demand for high-performance computing is increasing. Currently, SK hynix, Samsung, and Micron have all launched HBM3E DRAM, and plan to launch more advanced HBM4 memory by 2025.
Figure: Samsung and TSMC jointly develop HBM4 (Source: TSMC)
SK hynix recently announced that it will develop a product with 30 times the performance of the current HBM DRAM and provide a highly customized solution. Samsung hopes to combine its own memory manufacturing technology with TSMC's advanced multi-chip packaging technology to create a more competitive HBM4 product through cooperation with TSMC. Although Samsung and TSMC are competitors in the foundry market, and TSMC does not produce memory itself, its technological advantages in chiplet packaging and multi-chip integration are especially favored by the AI chip market. Therefore, the cooperation between the two companies in the field of memory became logical.
The Korea Economic Daily, citing anonymous sources, said that Samsung's partnership with TSMC is expected to help Samsung provide "customized chips and services," which have become the focus of demand from major customers such as Google and Nvidia. Although Samsung has full HBM4 service capabilities, including memory manufacturing, foundry, and advanced packaging, by leveraging TSMC's technology, Samsung hopes to further attract more high-end customers.
Currently, SK hynix is a leader in the HBM3 market, with a global market share of 53%, while Samsung has a 35% share. It is worth mentioning that SK hynix also relies on TSMC's manufacturing technology to promote the development and production of HBM4.
