“Samsung Electronics was the first to create high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and the HBM that NVIDIA used in the past was also a Samsung product. As a great memory company, they will recover and I am confident they will succeed in testing.”
The CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, a leader in the artificial intelligence (AI) chip market, noted on the 7th (local time) at a global press conference held at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Las Vegas that, in response to questions regarding HBM used in NVIDIA’s AI accelerators, he said, “SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics are great memory companies.” However, he added, “Samsung Electronics’ HBM is under testing,” stating, “I believe they will do well soon.”
In response to the question, 'Why is the testing taking so long?', Huang noted, “Korea is quite impatient, and that is a positive thing,” but added, “However, they (Samsung) have to engineer a new design, and they can do it.”
In NVIDIA, which dominates 90% of the AI accelerator market, SK Hynix essentially supplies HBM exclusively. Following the fourth generation HBM, HBM3, SK Hynix began supplying NVIDIA with the fifth generation HBM, HBM3E, 8-high and 12-high products, being the first memory company to do so from last year. After losing the leadership in HBM3, Samsung Electronics is preparing to supply HBM to NVIDIA, the big player in AI semiconductors, aiming to secure a foothold in the next-generation HBM3E market.
On that day, Huang emphasized the importance of HBM. He stated, “Looking at how many accelerators go into AI accelerators, you can see that HBM memory is a very important component.” HBM is a high-performance semiconductor that increases computing speed by stacking DRAM vertically, and is used as a key component alongside GPUs in AI accelerators. It is reported that NVIDIA's next-generation AI graphics processing unit (GPU) 'Blackwell' will contain 16 HBM3E units. Due to the limitations of SK Hynix's supply capacity to meet the demand for AI chips, there were initial expectations that Samsung Electronics' HBM3E would be supplied quickly; however, Huang has reiterated that they are still testing Samsung products on that day.
NVIDIA has been mentioning that it is testing Samsung's HBM for two years. Last June, at a press conference held in Taipei, Taiwan, Huang noted, “Samsung Electronics is working hard to pass the tests as quickly as possible so that it can be used in our AI semiconductor process.” In the meantime, SK Hynix has been expanding its market dominance. SK Hynix plans to supply samples of the HBM3E 16-high products to NVIDIA and proceed with the certification process during the first half of this year.