Nvidia asks S Korea SK hynix to pull forward chip deliveries

Nvidia asks S Korea SK hynix to pull forward chip deliveries
by AFP Staff Writers
Seoul (AFP) Nov 4, 2024

The head of AI computing giant Nvidia asked South Korea's SK hynix to speed up delivery of newer, more advanced HBM4 chips by six months, the head of SK Group said Monday.

Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, made the request amid a global shortage of crucial advanced chips, which SK has pledged to work on with fellow market leader TSMC of Taiwan.

SK hynix, the world's second-largest memory chip maker, is racing to meet explosive demand for the HBM chips that are used to process vast amounts of data to train AI, including from Nvidia, which dominates the market.

"The current pace of HBM memory technology development and product launches is impressive, but AI still requires higher-performance memory," said Huang by video link at an AI summit in Seoul.

The firm said last month that it was on course to deliver the 12-layer HBM4 chips by the second half of 2025.

SK hynix also said Monday that it would ship samples of the first ever 16-layer HBM3E chips by early 2025, as it seeks to bolster its growing AI chip dominance.

"Nvidia is demanding more HBM as it releases better chip versions every year," Chey Tae-won, CEO of SK Group said.

He said it was a "happy challenge" which kept his company busy.

The company said it was mass-producing the world's first 12-layer HBM3E product in September, and now aims to ship samples to clients of the newer, more advanced products very quickly.

The additional layers add more bandwidth speed, power efficiency and improve the total capacity of the chips.

"SK hynix has been preparing for various 'world first' products by being the first in the industry to develop and start volume shipping," SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung said.

"SK hynix has been developing 48GB 16-high HBM3E in a bid to secure technological stability and plans to provide samples to customers early next year," Kwak added.

In 2013, SK hynix launched the first high-bandwidth memory chips -- cutting-edge semiconductors that enable faster data processing and the more complex tasks of generative AI.

Rival Samsung has been lagging behind SK hynix when it comes to HBM chips, and the market capitalisation gap between Samsung Electronics and SK hynix reached its narrowest level in 13 years in October.

SK hynix's shares rose 6.48 percent on Monday.