Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang asked South Korea's SK Hynix to shrink the delivery timeline for its HBM4, a high-bandwidth next-generation chip, by six months amid tough competition for energy-efficient AI chips.
High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chips are essential for processing vast amounts of data in AI technology.
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won told Reuters on Monday that the company aimed to supply the chips by the second half of 2025 but had to fast-track the process for unspecified reasons.
With design and testing complete, HBM4 memory was days away from its factory debut in October. It is now racing against time to complete production likely due to commitments from key customers, including NVIDIA. NVIDIA uses HBM3E memory for its AI chips and has already lined up HBM4 for its upcoming Rubin R100 AI GPU.
Huang's request for a faster delivery is a testament to soaring demand for high-capacity, energy-efficient chips that power the company's graphic processing units. Nvidia commands more than 80% of the global AI chip market, per Reuters.
"So we agreed to try and shorten the timeline by six months," Chey said during his keynote speech for SK AI Summit 2024 held at southern Seoul's Coex, per Korea Joongang Daily.
"Now I'm a bit nervous to meet Huang again," Chey said. "We're worried he might ask us to speed it up even further."
"The work we did with HBM memories has really made it possible for us to achieve what appears to be super Moore's Law because we're simultaneously reducing the numerical precision, moving to a more structured way of processing the matrix multiplies, and the memory bandwidth was being expanded with more bandwidth and more energy efficiency at the same time. Compounding all of those effects led to super-acceleration of processing capabilities."
Nvidia heavily relies on SK Hynix for the production of its Nvidia's chipsets. However, the company faces growing competition from Samsung Electronics and Micron.
Kwak Noh-Jung, the CEO of SK Hynix, revealed the company's advanced memory chip roadmap at the SK AI SUMMIT 2024 in Seoul. The roadmap calls for 12-layer HBM3E sales this year and 18-layer HBM3E samples in early 2025.
Meanwhile, Samsung aims to regain momentum in the HBM market as it strives to secure a supply deal with a major customer. The company's 2025 roadmap includes HBM3E products that will offer improved performance and efficiency.
