TSMC Joins Forces With SK Hynix on Next-Generation HBM4

The rise of AI is beginning to cause seismic shifts within the semiconductor industry as firms race to come out on top of what seems like a once-in-a-generation business opportunity. The latest shift is that memory-maker SK Hynix and chip-maker TSMC have reportedly allied to pool their technical resources to thwart Samsung, which represents a sizable threat to both companies’ core businesses.
The new joint effort by the two companies is reportedly called One Team, according to a Korean site called Pulse News. It states this partnership will primarily focus on developing the next generation of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), known as HBM4. It will be an upgrade to HBM3e, the fastest 3D-stacked memory used in high-performance computing (HPC) hardware. It’s expected that next-generation enterprise hardware from AMD and Nvidia will utilize HBM3e, but the One Team wants to be at the tip of the spear when HBM4 arrives in 2026.
The report states that SK Hynix already dominates HBM with approximately 50% market share. TSMC is already the world’s largest semiconductor foundry, making the pairing one of sizable influence. The report states that SK Hynix and TSMC took market share away from their joint rival Samsung in 2023 when the entire industry faced a post-pandemic downturn. Samsung reportedly halted production last year in April when its Q1 profits dropped by a staggering 96% year-over-year. Still, analysts noted the company took too long to make this crucial decision.
According to Wccftech, Nvidia might deploy HBM4 on the architecture that will come after its next-generation Blackwell GPUs, which are slated for arrival later this year. The product after that will allegedly use the R100 designation and be named after famed astronomer Vera Rubin. It notably upgraded the memory on its Grace Hopper SuperChip in late 2023 from HBM3 to HBM3e, but it’s unknown which firm is supplying it. However, Nvidia typically uses Micron memory for its GPUs. Regarding AMD, it’s unclear what the company has planned for its Zen 5-based server products, but its current MI300 accelerators use HBM3 made by Samsung.
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