According to BusinessKorea, SK Hynix said at a recent investor briefing that the company aims to double sales of HBM and DDR5 chips, key components of AI servers, next year.
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Prices and demand for HBM and DDR5 chips are growing due to surging demand for AI. High-performance memory HBM, which vertically connects multiple DRAMs, is 5-6 times more expensive than existing DRAM products, and the price of the latest DDR5 is also 15%-20% higher than the previous generation DDR4.
SK Hynix currently accounts for less than 1% of the sales volume of HBM products, but the sales accounted for about 10%. If the size of the HBM3 and DDR5 business doubles, it is expected to accelerate revenue growth and improve profits. In view of the fact that SK Hynix is expected to lose more than 6 trillion won in the first half of this year (Note: currently about 33.78 billion CNY), the target setting is also interpreted as the company hopes to achieve performance rebound through the high value-added memory market.
SK Hynix, which previously launched the world’s first 12-layer HBM3 product, said at a briefing that it expects its two product lines, HBM and DDR5, to more than triple in size by 2024.
SK hynix also revealed a specific roadmap for its next-generation products, and they set the production target time of the sixth-generation HBM product HBM4 as 2026. At present, SK hynix has determined the mass production time of its next-generation product HBM3E in the first half of next year.
Technology competition around high-value-added DRAM in the semiconductor industry, including SK Hynix, is expected to intensify. Samsung Electronics plans to start HBM3 production by the end of this year, and plans to invest hundreds of billions of won to double the HBM production capacity at the Chungnam Cheonan plant. Starting in the fourth quarter, Samsung’s HBM3 will also be supplied to Nvidia, a major customer currently monopolized by SK Hynix.
