SK hynix announces HBM3: only 1/3 as thick as a piece of A4 paper

SK hynix has just announced that it is the first in the industry to successfully develop HBM3 -- or High Bandwidth Memory 3 -- the world's fastest DRAM.

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HBM3 will have vertically connected DRAM chips that will have up to 819GB/sec of memory bandwidth, up from the 460GB/sec on HBM2E and 410GB/sec from HBM2. SK hynix will also have the largest capacity VRAM with 16GB and 24GB HBM3, with SK hynix noting that its engineers ground the height of a DRAM chip to approximately 30 micrometer, which is the "equivalent to a third of an A4 paper's thickness" before vertically stacking 12 chips using through-silicon via (TSV) technology.

Note: TSV is an interconnecting technology that links the upper and lower DRAM chips with electrode that vertically passes through thousands of fine holes on DRAM chips.

The company points out that the 819GB/sec of memory bandwidth is the equivalent of transferring 163 individual 1080p movies (at 5GB each) in a single second. HBM3 also corrects data (bit) errors with a built-in on-die error-correction code that SK hynix says "significantly improving the reliability of the product".

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Seon-yong Cha, Executive Vice President in charge of the DRAM development explains: "Since its launch of the world's first HBM DRAM, SK hynix has succeeded in developing the industry's first HBM3 after leading the HBM2E market. We will continue our efforts to solidify our leadership in the premium memory market and help boost the values of our customers by providing products that are in line with the ESG management standards".

SK hynix expects the super-fast next-gen HBM3 to be mainly used in high-performance data centers, as well as machine learning platforms so that it can boost the level of artificial intelligence and supercomputing performance that is used to conduct climate change analysis and drug development.