Samsung announces it has manufactured a sample of 16-stack HBM for AI GPUs

Samsung has announced that it has manufactured a sample of its brand-new 16-stack HBM. The company manufactured the chip with hybrid bonding last week.

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Samsung vice president Kim Dae-woo said the South Korean giant made its new 16-layer HBM with HBM3 but plans to use HBM4 to improve productivity. Due to alignment issues, Samsung was expected to use hybrid bonding for just one or two stacks of the HBM chip but applied the hybrid bonding technique to all 16 stacks.

The 16-stack HBM memory sample was made using equipment from Samsung's fab equipment subsidiary, Semes, with Kim noting that Samsung considered using hybrid bonding or thermal compression non-conductive film for HBM4, which Samsung will be sampling in 2025 and mass producing next-gen HBM4 memory in 2026.

Samsung's just-announced HBM3E memory uses TC-NCF technology, while hybrid bonding can be better as they can add more stacks compactly without needing through-silicon-via (TSV), which uses filler bumps to connect. The core die DRAM on the HBM memory chips can also become thicker with the same technique, notes TheElec.