SK Hynix kicks off mass production of HBM2E: fastest DRAM in the world

HBM2E on a 6-stack configuration could boast an out-of-this-world 2.76TB/sec memory bandwidth.

@anthony256

Published Jul 2, 2020 11:25 PM CDT
Updated Nov 3, 2020 11:43 AM CST

40 seconds read time

SK Hynix has just announced it has begun mass production of HBM2E memory, which boasts higher transfer speeds of 3.6Gbps/pin, and can handle capacities of up to 16GB per stack.

SK Hynix kicks off mass production of HBM2E: fastest DRAM in the world 02

HBM2E is an upgrade over HBM2, with twice the capacities over its predecessor we're looking at 8-Hi, 16GB stacks. The new HBM2E memory standard can be clocked at up to 3.6Gbps/pin, which is faster than the 3.2Gbps/pin that the official HBM2E spec has at its maximum.

What does this mean? Companies can use HBM2E memory controllers that handle the higher 3.6Gbps/pin speeds, which is out of spec -- a nice 'free' upgrade. A single 1024-pin stack provides 460GB/sec, while a 2048-pin stack provides 960GB/sec, a 6-stack configuration would offer a simply mind blowing 2.76TB/sec of memory bandwidth.

Don't expect this to be on a new consumer Radeon or GeForce graphics card in the near future, but rather HPC and supercomputers.

Anthony Garreffa

Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.