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It has been confirmed that SK Hynix will solely provide excessive bandwidth reminiscence (HBM) to Microsoft’s newest synthetic intelligence (AI) chip Maia 200.
With Samsung Electronics signaling a counterattack within the HBM market this 12 months, and HBM demand increasing to firms utilizing proprietary AI semiconductors akin to Google and Amazon Net Providers (AWS), the 2 firms are anticipated to have interaction in fierce competitors to safe clients.
In response to trade sources on Jan. 27, SK Hynix is reported to provide its newest product, HBM3E (fifth era), to the Maia 200 AI accelerator that Microsoft unveiled on Jan. 26 (native time). Moreover, SK Hynix seems to be taking part because the unique provider for the product.
The Maia 200, manufactured based mostly on Taiwan’s TSMC’s 3-nanometer (nm; 1nm = 1 billionth of a meter) course of, is characterised by enhanced effectivity in AI inference duties. It makes use of 216 gigabyte (GB) HBM3E, with six items of SK Hynix’s 12-layer HBM3E put in.
Microsoft has already put in the chip in its Iowa information heart in the US and is increasing its purposes by including it to its Arizona information heart as properly.
Semiconductor trade insiders view that the HBM market has secured new development drivers past NVIDIA demand, with the emergence of firms’ proprietary AI chips geared toward lowering NVIDIA dependency, together with not solely Microsoft but additionally Google’s seventh era Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) Ironwood and Amazon’s third era Trainium.
As HBM demand will increase, competitors between Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to safe further volumes is noticed to accentuate additional.
For instance, in Google TPU, evaluations point out that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have established themselves as core parts of the availability chain. TPU is a chip that Google created along with U.S. semiconductor design firm Broadcom to function AI, with 6 to eight HBMs put in per TPU unit.
In response to funding financial institution UBS evaluation, SK Hynix, the primary firm within the HBM market, seems to carry provide benefits concentrating on application-specific built-in circuit (ASIC) clients akin to Google, Broadcom, and AWS. Samsung Electronics has been supplying extra HBM volumes to Google and Broadcom as of the second half of final 12 months, and observations recommend it is going to provide most volumes this 12 months as properly.
Competitors between the 2 firms is noticed to be fierce even within the next-generation product HBM4 (sixth era). Samsung Electronics just lately handed the ultimate qualification (high quality) assessments associated to HBM4 performed by NVIDIA and AMD, and is thought to start official supply subsequent month.
If Samsung Electronics formally delivers HBM4 subsequent month, this may be an trade first and will obtain analysis as taking the lead in next-generation HBM market dominance.
SK Hynix has additionally established HBM4 mass manufacturing programs since September final 12 months and equipped massive portions of paid samples to NVIDIA, primarily coming into mass manufacturing. Moreover, the HBM optimization course of ongoing with NVIDIA has entered the ultimate qualification stage, and it’s identified to start remaining product mass manufacturing quickly.
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