South Korea’s SK Hynix forecasts that the market for a specialised type of memory chip designed for synthetic intelligence will grow 30% a year till 2030, a senior govt stated in an interview with Reuters.
The upbeat projection for international development in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to be used in AI brushes off concern over rising worth pressures in a sector that for many years has been handled like commodities resembling oil or coal.
“AI demand from the end user is pretty much, very firm and strong,” stated SK Hynix’s Choi Joon-yong, the top of HBM enterprise planning at SK Hynix.
The billions of {dollars} in AI capital spending that cloud computing corporations resembling Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google are projecting will doubtless be revised upwards sooner or later, which might be “positive” for the HBM market, Choi stated.
The relationship between AI build-outs and HBM purchases is “very straightforward” and there may be a correlation between the 2, Choi stated. SK Hynix’s projections are conservative and embody constraints resembling obtainable power, he stated.
But the memory enterprise is present process a vital strategic change throughout this era as properly. HBM – a kind of dynamic random entry memory or DRAM customary first produced in 2013 – entails stacking chips vertically to save house and cut back energy consumption, serving to to course of the massive volumes of knowledge generated by complicated AI functions.
SK Hynix expects this market for customized HBM to grow to tens of billions of {dollars} by 2030, Choi stated.
Due to technological adjustments in the way in which SK Hynix and rivals resembling Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics construct next-generation HBM4, their merchandise embody a customer-specific logic die, or “base die”, that helps handle the memory.
That means it’s now not doable to simply change a rival’s memory product with a practically equivalent chip or product.
Part of SK Hynix’s optimism for future HBM market development contains the probability that clients will need even additional customisation than what SK Hynix already does, Choi stated.
At the second it’s principally bigger clients resembling Nvidia that obtain particular person customisation, whereas smaller shoppers get a conventional one-size-fits-all method.
“Each customer has different taste,” Choi stated, including that some need particular efficiency or energy traits.
SK Hynix is at present the principle HBM provider to Nvidia, though Samsung and Micron provide it with smaller volumes. Last week, Samsung cautioned throughout its earnings convention name that present technology HBM3E provide would doubtless outpace demand development within the close to time period, a shift that would weigh on costs.
“We are confident to provide, to make the right competitive product to the customers,” Choi stated.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday stated the United States would impose a tariff of about 100% on semiconductor chips imported from international locations not producing in America or planning to achieve this.
Choi declined to touch upon the tariffs.
Trump advised reporters within the Oval Office the brand new tariff price would apply to “all chips and semiconductors coming into the United States,” however wouldn’t apply to corporations that have been already manufacturing within the United States or had made a dedication to achieve this.
Trump’s feedback weren’t a formal tariff announcement, and the president provided no additional specifics.
South Korea’s high commerce envoy Yeo Han-koo stated on Thursday that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix wouldn’t be topic to the 100% tariffs on chips in the event that they have been carried out.
Samsung has invested in two chip fabrication vegetation in Austin and Taylor, Texas, and SK Hynix has introduced plans to construct a sophisticated chip packaging plant and a synthetic intelligence analysis and growth facility in Indiana.
South Korea’s chip exports to the United States have been valued at $10.7 billion final year, accounting for 7.5% of its whole chip exports.
Some HBM chips are exported to Taiwan for packaging, accounting for 18% of South Korea’s chip exports in 2024, a 127% improve from the earlier year.
