Samsung to Double HBM4 Output Next Year as Glass Carrier Orders Jump 2.5x
Samsung is expected to more than double output of its HBM4 and HBM4E DRAM
Samsung Electronics is set to more than double production of its HBM4 and HBM4E memory chips next year, with monthly HBM wafer capacity rising from about 180,000 to 250,000. Outsourced glass carrier cleaning volume will jump from 20,000 to 50,000 sheets a month, a signal that high-layer stacking is scaling fast. The HBM4 family should make up 80% of shipments, up from 40% this year.
Even accounting for the fact that glass carriers are reused after cleaning and that consumption varies by process loading method and yield, a 2.5-fold increase in related volume makes it highly likely that HBM4 and HBM4E output will grow at least twofold from this year.
- nullbio
Will consumers actually get to purchase it though? Or are they just doubling it for frontier AI labs?
- y1n0
I’ve often wondered about die thinning. I mean just looking at sd cards and micro sd etc, it was clear that there had to be a thinning step (or many steps) and it seemed amazing to me that such a complex step could be economically viable. And yet it clearly is. All a matter of being able to operate at scale I guess.
It’s not a step I’ve seen discussed very much, so it was kind of neat to see it discussed front and center in a lay article like this.
- HarHarVeryFunny
On a related note, I was reading yesterday that apparently the real bottleneck for Chinese production of AI accelerators is HBM production, not processors or ASML equipment.
The lack of ASML EUV machines certainly hurts, and pushing DUV so hard results in abysmal yields of good chips, but you can compensate by running more wafers or making smaller chips, and the net result is that Huawei's Ascend production volume is limited by CXMT's HBM capacity not processor dies.
The problem is that HBM manufacture requires many steps (die thinning, via drilling, plating, alignment) where the equipment used by everyone else (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) is also blocked by sanctions, so the Chinese are having to develop all of this themselves too, which they have, but yields are currently low, even when using shorter HBM stacks.
- tugback
Good to see Samsung stepping up; maybe GPU prices will finally cool down a bit with more HBM supply hitting the market.
- fooker
What's the main blocker (other than the current inflated cost) for using HBM instead of DRAM as the primary memory for consumer electronics?
- gs17
A shame that this should if anything, lead to consumer DRAM prices getting even worse.
- amelius
Will that be enough for AI's hunger?
- glub
tl;dr; This is existing production being redirected to HBM. Which means consumer market is going to get a lot worse.
And the worst thing is that is the best possible strategy for them. It's essentially win-win for everyone but consumers.
- Buyer (AI) has crazy money, so will pay whatever
- Seller doesn't have to build anything new, as the buyer is willing to pay whatever
- Generate ridiculous profits from crazy money
- No oversupply risk in case of reversal
- Return from producing HBM to DDR5 in a single quarter if reversal does happen.
Hold on to your existing hardware, people, and be on lookout for your local deals.
- dalton74
Good, maybe this means cloud GPU prices will eventually normalize. Still feeling the pinch from the AI gold rush.
- xbmcuser
To me, the most idiotic thing is that the world currently cannot build power plants fast enough to even use all the HBM that is being produced. That is, a large portion of HBM and cards are sitting in storage, waiting for the data centers and the power plants to run them. The FOMO in the AI world isn't just in the stock market