Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
Samsung diversifies client base for HBM3e to recover memory biz
The Broadcom company logo is shown outside an office complex in Irvine, Calif., March 4, 2021. Reuters-Yonhap
By Nam Hyun-woo
Samsung Electronics is expediting its efforts for recovery in the memory business, expanding its client base for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips for artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators.
According to industry officials Wednesday, Samsung Electronics has recently completed Broadcom’s qualification tests for its eight-layer HBM3e chips and is preparing to begin mass production. Samsung Electronics refused to confirm this, citing confidentiality agreements with its client.
Broadcom is quickly emerging as a rival to Nvidia, the world’s most dominant manufacturer of AI accelerators. Broadcom designs chips for AI data centers operated by global tech giants such as Google and Meta.
An AMD MI350 series artificial intelligence chip is displayed at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., June 12. Reuters-Yonhap
This follows AMD’s announcement last week that its new MI350 Series AI accelerators will be equipped with Samsung Electronics' 12-layer HBM3e. It was the first time AMD has publicly confirmed Samsung as a supplier of HBM for its products.
While announcing the supply, AMD CEO Lisa Su said that its new accelerators will help clients to lower their annual operating expenditures by more than 40 percent, noting the chip “matches the performance of the significantly more expensive and complex” Nvidia accelerators. Nvidia is using SK hynix’s HBM.
In recent months, Samsung Electronics' memory business has been struggling, as its HBM3e has yet to pass the qualification for Nvidia AI accelerators, which account for over 70 percent of the global AI chip market.
Samsung’s supply to Broadcom and AMD are viewed as a recovery signal for its memory business. “Our HBM sales hit the bottom in the first quarter, but are expected to show a recovery each quarter starting from the second quarter, driven by sales of HBM3e products,” the company said during an earnings call in April for the first quarter of this year.
Against this backdrop, Samsung’s chipmaking Device Solutions division held a strategy meeting presided over by Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun. While details of the meeting remain undisclosed, the company is assumed to have discussed chip qualification tests scheduled for the second half of this year and the development of the next-generation HBM4.