SK hynix advances mass production of HBM4E by one year to 2026

[Courtesy of SK hynix Inc.]

SK hynix Inc. announced on Monday that it will commence mass production of the 7th generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM4E) from 2026, advancing its previously planned production schedule by one year.

Kim Kwi-wook, head of the company’s advanced HBM technology team, unveiled this roadmap at the IEEE International Memory Workshop 2024 in Seoul.

“While HBM has been advancing every two years, the cycle has been shortened to one year since the 5th generation (HBM3E) product,” Kim said.

Industry insiders predict that HBM4E will consist of 16 to 20 vertically stacked layers. SK hynix has already planned to mass-produce the HBM4 16-layer product in 2026. The company also hinted at the possibility of employing hybrid bonding from HBM4 onwards to stack more DRAM dies.

Hybrid bonding enables stacking more DRAM by eliminating bumps between chips. SK hynix previously announced plans to apply the Advanced MR-MUF process up to HBM4.

“For HBM4, we are studying hybrid bonding alongside our main process but the yield is currently not high,” Kim said. “If customers demand products with more than 20 layers, we may need to explore new processes due to thickness limitations.”

Industry watchers said SK hynix is expected to apply 6th generation (1c) DRAM of 10 nanometers to HBM4E for the first time, which will significantly increase storage capacity.

Until now, SK hynix utilized 5th generation (1b) DRAM of 10 nanometers to produce HBM3E and HBM4.