SK Hynix expects to hit an accumulated revenue of mid-US$10 billion in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) sales by the end of 2024.
The memory maker has already sold out its HBM capacity for the year as well as those for 2025, SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung said during a press conference on Thursday at the company’s headquarters at Icheon, south of South Korea’s capital Seoul.
To maintain its leadership in technology, the memory maker is planning to provide samples of its 12-stack HBM3E in Mary and start mass production of the chip in the third quarter, Kwak also said.
This will allow the company to reach an accumulated revenue of mid-US$10 billion by the end of this year, the CEO added.
On concerns of whether there will be an oversupply of HBM to the market, Kwak explained that HBM is different from general-purpose memory chips and is more based on customer demand.
This means SK Hynix can control its spending level of spending when it comes to HBM production capacity better than other memory chips that are more commodities, the CEO explained.
The company is setting up a through silicon via (TSV) line at its M15 fab in Cheongju, Its new fab, dubbed M15X, which SK Hynix has earmarked 20 trillion won for, will make next-generation DRAMs..
This means the DRAMs made at M15X will likely be used to make HBMs by being delivered to M15 for the TSV process. TSVs are microscopic wires that are punched through DRAMs when they are assembled into HBMs.
According to SK Hynix, M15X will house space for the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) process and construction started in April. The cleanroom will be opened next year and mass production start in the third quarter of 2026.
SK Hynix also stressed that it has been using its mass reflow molded underfill (MR-MUF) process to manufacture 12-stack HBM3E, a rebuttal to critics who believe that the process will have limits in increasing the number of stacks in future HBMs.
The company explained that MR-MUF will be used for HBM4 for 16 stacks. Rivals Samsung and Micron are instead using thermal compression non-conductive film (TC-NCF) process to increase their stacks.
