SK Hynix said on Thursday that it has begun manufacturing 36GB 12-stack HBM3E, or HBM3E 12H, becoming the world’s first memory maker to do so.
Its predecessor 8-stack HBM3E was made with 3GB DRAM chips and offered 24GB in capacity.
SK Hynix said it will begin supplying its newest chip to its customer within the year.
Though it didn’t mention the customer’s name, it is most certainly Nvidia. HBM3E 12H will be used by the GPU maker’s latest AI accelerator Blackwell.
Morgan Stanley said earlier this week that Nvidia has started mass production of Blackwell at TSMC factories and 450,000 units of the chips are expected to shipped in the fourth quarter alone. Analyst first TrendForce also estimated that HBM3E 12H is expected to account for over 40% of HBM shipped.
SK Hynix said its HBM3E 12H offered the speed, capacity, and stability needed for AI applications.
The chip offered a speed of 9.6Gbps __ a GPU with four of the chips can read the whole parameter 35 times per second when operating 70B parameter Llama 3, the memory maker claimed.
HBM3E 12H also has the same thickness as HBM3E 8H __ SK Hynix made each DRAM chip 40% thinner and stacked them using through silicon via (TSV).
The company also touted its own advanced MR-MUF process that increased the thermal resistance of the chip by 10% compared to its predecessor.
