Samsung and TSMC cooperate on HBM4 DRAM memory

High Bandwith Memory Samsung and TSMC cooperate on HBM4 DRAM memory

2024-09-09 From Sebastian Gerstl | Translated by AI 2 min Reading Time

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Samsung has decided to work closely with manufacturing specialist TSMC to develop its next-generation bufferless DRAM memory, High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) 4. This was announced by a high-ranking TSMC manager at the Semicon Taiwan 2024 Forum last week.

Dan Kochpatcharin, Head of Ecosystem & Alliance Management Division (3DFabric, EDA,IP, DCA, Cloud Alliance), announced a collaboration between foundry operators TSMC and Samsung for the first time last week at the Semiconductor Forum Semicon Taiwan.(Image: TSMC) — Dan Kochpatcharin, Head of Ecosystem & Alliance Management Division (3DFabric, EDA,IP, DCA, Cloud Alliance), announced a collaboration between foundry operators TSMC and Samsung for the first time last week at the Semiconductor Forum Semicon Taiwan.
(Image: TSMC)

SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron are in a tight race: The world's three largest memory manufacturers are all striving to be the first company to launch the next generation of High Bandwidth Memory DRAM, also known as HBM4, on the market in 2025. As the Korean business newspaper The Korea Economic Daily reports, Samsung has decided to work closely with TSMC for the first time to produce the new memory.

The newspaper refers to statements made by Dan Kochpatcharin, Head of Ecosystem and Alliance Management at TSMC, last week at the Semiconductor Forum Semicon Taiwan 2024. According to these statements, the jointly manufactured HBM4 memories should have up to 40% better energy efficiency and 10% lower latency times than previous HBM3 memories.

Compared to single-plane DRAM, HBM achieves higher data processing speeds. The reason behind this: HBM connects multiple DRAMs vertically using through-silicon via and bumps. HBM connects several DRAMs vertically using through-silicon via and bumps.

High-bandwidth memory, so named for its particularly high data throughput rates, is in high demand, especially in the emerging field of artificial intelligence applications. SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron all currently offer HBM3E DRAMs, but would like to introduce the HBM4 format as early as 2025.

SK Hynix recently announced that the memory manufacturer will develop products with 30 times the performance of HBM DRAM (High-Bandwidth Memory) and offer customized products.

Samsung memory technology in TSMC packaging

The cooperation is remarkable in that Samsung and TSMC are actually competitors in the foundry business. However, TSMC does not manufacture any memory on its own, but has particularly advanced capacities for multi-die packaging and so-called chiplet advanced packaging, which is particularly in demand for the production of upcoming AI chips. Against this backdrop, a collaboration seems obvious.

According to the Korea Economic Daily, the cooperation between the two manufacturing giants will ensure that Samsung can provide "customized chips and services", which have already been requested by major customers such as Google and NVIDIA. Although Samsung is able to offer comprehensive HBM4 services—including memory production, foundry and advanced packaging—the company hopes to use TSMC's technology to attract more customers, the business daily added, citing unnamed internal sources.

SK Hynix is currently the global market leader in HBM3 memory. According to DRAMExchange, Samsung's Korean competitor accounts for 53% of current demand, followed by Samsung with 35%. SK Hynix also relies on manufacturing technology from TSMC for its planned production of HBM4 memory.

This article was first published on our sister website www.ElektronikPraxis.de (German Language), Vogel Communciations Group

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