Global chip demand conditions improve, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix and the South Korean chip industry is undoubtedly good, in favor of them to ease the difficulties from the second half of last year.

And South Korea also released data show that their chip output value in September, up 12.9%, leading South Korea’s industrial output value in September, up 1.1%, and then two consecutive months of year-on-year growth.

In the new release of the third quarter of the earnings report, the world’s largest storage chip maker Samsung Electronics disclosed that although the demand for traditional servers is still relatively weak, but thanks to smart phones, PCs and other areas of high-density products to increase the adoption of customer inventory adjustments and strong demand for high-end AI products, the demand environment for storage chips has been improving, and in the fourth quarter may further improve.

And it is worth noting that at the end of the third quarter and the beginning of the fourth quarter, a number of major electronics manufacturers, including Apple, launched new smartphones, laptops and other new products, the demand for storage chips will increase, which is also expected to push up the Samsung Electronics storage business and SK Hynix revenues, South Korea’s chip output in the next few months, is also expected to continue to increase in the ring.

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“Given the impact on the value of our investment assets, we do not agree to the merger at this time,” SK Hynix Chief Financial Officer Kim Woo-hyun told analysts on a conference call on Thursday, according to the Financial Times. “But we will provide for all Decisions are made by stakeholders, including Kioxia and shareholders.”

▲Image source Financial Times

James Lim, an analyst at U.S. hedge fund Dalton Investments, said the reason why SK Hynix opposes the merger of Kioxia and Western Digital is that SK Hynix does not want to see a stronger competitor emerge. “The combined entity’s market share will be twice that of SK Hynix”.

Western Digital and Kioxia have been discussing a possible merger for years, and the companies are seeking to wrap up talks this month and hope to announce a deal before Western Digital reports earnings on Oct. 30. Kioxia had previously been in contact with Japan Investment Corp., hoping to inject capital to speed up the transaction process. However, SK Hynix has publicly expressed its opposition to the merger, so the overall plan is now facing new variables.

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The company said that strong demand for advanced chips used in artificial intelligence has cushioned the impact of continued sluggish demand for common chips used in devices such as smartphones and computers.

SK Hynix said its business of selling DRAM chips used in technology equipment returned to profitability in the third quarter, after losing money in the first two quarters of this year.

“The DRAM business… is expected to continue to improve as generative artificial intelligence booms. The still loss-making NAND flash business is also showing signs of improvement,” the chipmaker said in a statement.

SK Hynix said its operating loss in the third quarter was 1.8 trillion won, compared with a profit of 1.7 trillion won in the same period last year.

This was its fourth consecutive quarterly loss, but an improvement from losses of 3.4 trillion won in the first quarter of this year and 2.9 trillion won in the second quarter.

SK Hynix’s third-quarter operating income fell 18% year-on-year to 9.1 trillion won.

The memory chip industry has been experiencing its weakest decline in decades since last year. Analysts said SK Hynix’s business of selling NAND flash memory chips used for data storage could lose about 2 trillion won in the third quarter as demand dries up.

However, demand for SK Hynix’s advanced DRAM chips, such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips for generative artificial intelligence in the fast-growing field, is solid. SK Hynix is ahead of rivals in developing the HBM3 chip and landing AI chip leader Nvidia as a customer.

SK Hynix said the effects of production cuts by memory chip manufacturers are starting to show, with customers starting to place new orders and chip prices starting to stabilize.

Some analysts expect SK Hynix to turn profitable in the current quarter as makers of equipment such as smartphones and PCs grapple with weak consumer demand and gradually reduce their chip inventories to levels low enough to resume purchases .

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SK Hynix said it has worked with Qualcomm on compatibility validation since developing LPDDR5T DRAM in January of this year. The two companies validated the LPDDR5T DRAM on smartphones combining it with Qualcomm’s latest third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, and both products delivered excellent performance.

SK Hynix emphasized, “The Company’s LPDDR5T DRAM has successfully completed performance validation with major mobile AP (Application Processor) suppliers such as Qualcomm, the world’s leading communications chip company, and the deployment of LPDDR5T DRAMs in mobile devices will expand rapidly in the future.”

SK Hynix plans to offer customers a 16GB (gigabit) capacity kit that combines LPDDR5T DRAM single chips. With a data processing speed of 77GB per second, this product is equivalent to processing 15 Full-HD (FHD) movies in one second.

In addition, LPDDR5T DRAM can operate at the lowest voltage standard range of 1.01 to 1.12V (volts) specified by the International Organization for Standardization of Semiconductors (JEDEC), and also offers advantages in terms of power consumption.

SK Hynix’s technical team utilized the HKMG (High-K Metal Gate) process in the development of this product, effectively improving performance in terms of both operating speed and power consumption. As a result, the company expects LPDDR5T DRAM to occupy a large share of the mobile DRAM market before the next-generation LPDDR6 DRAM comes out.

SK Hynix LPDDR5T memory has been validated in MediaTek’s next-generation mobile platform (expected to be the Tenguet 9300) in August this year.

According to another news obtained by Interface News from the supply chain end, the Vivo X100 series will be the world’s first flagship model equipped with Hynix LPDDR5T memory.

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In other words, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix can freely supply semiconductor equipment containing American technology to Chinese factories without requiring separate approval.

The U.S. Commerce Department is updating its “verified end-user” list to determine which entities can export specific technologies, Yonhap News Agency said. Once included on the list, there is no need to obtain a separate export license, which means that US export control policies are effectively suspended indefinitely.

“We welcome the U.S. government’s decision to extend exemptions from export control regulations. We believe this decision will help stabilize the global semiconductor supply chain,” SK Hynix said in a statement.

It is found that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix received one-year authorization from the U.S. Department of Commerce last year to supply equipment required for chip production to factories in China without applying for additional license, and this exemption expired in October this year.

Currently, Samsung Electronics produces NAND flash memory in Xi’an, China, SK Hynix produces DRAM chips at its Wuxi plant, and NAND flash memory in Dalian. It is noted that TrendForce statistics show that as of the end of June, these two companies together controlled nearly 70% of the global DRAM and 50% of the NAND flash memory market.

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Micron’s HBM3E memory uses an eight-tier layout with 24 GB per stack, and is produced using 1β technology for excellent performance.

Micron said its HBM3E memory will offer the same level of performance as its competitors, but at a lower cost than other competitors. Micron said it will begin commercial shipments next year and is currently seeking certification for these products to meet NVIDIA’s requirements.

HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) is a vertically connected multiple DRAMs that can significantly increase data processing speeds. HBM DRAM products are developed in the order of HBM (first generation), HBM2 (second generation), HBM2E (third generation), HBM3 (fourth generation), and HBM3E (fifth generation). hbm3e is the HBM3E is an extended version of HBM3.

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In fact, in addition to increasing the number of layers, the means to increase storage density also include other solutions. At present, 4bit cell (QLC) type 3D NAND flash memory has been commercialized, and SSD has benefited from this and has become a “cabbage price”.

Although SSDs are showing signs of rising prices, several major manufacturers have begun to develop the next-generation 5-bit unit (PLC) solution, and I believe everyone will be able to use solid-state drives with larger capacity and faster speeds.

At the FMS 2023 Flash Memory Summit, SK Hynix demonstrated the results of its research on new PLC (5-Bit MLC) technology.

The principle of this technology is similar to the Twin BiCS FLASH technology developed by Kioxia in 2019. Simply put, it uses two 2.5 bit units, so that if two threads write at the same time, it will definitely be much faster than 5 bit storage.

In a 5 bit unit, a storage unit can contain 32 different threshold voltages (Note: 25), and the time required to write and verify 32 different threshold voltages with PLC in the conventional way is TLC. Nearly 20 times, which is obviously unacceptable to users.

Therefore, SK Hynix designed a new type of PLC that divides a 5bit unit into two 2.5 bit points, and each point also stores 2.5 bits. Then the data of each point is integrated to obtain 5 bit data, so that the writing time of PLC can be roughly the same as that of TLC (3bit unit).

In fact, Solidigm has demonstrated the first SSD using PLC-NAND a year ago, which uses the same 192-layer flash memory as the current QLC-NAND, but since each unit is composed of 5 bits (instead of 4 bits), its density increased to 23.3 Gbit/mm², setting a record high; and with the new 9th generation TLC-NAND with 321 layers, SK hynix is expected to reach a density of more than 20 Gbit/mm². Of course, more layers also mean more work steps and higher costs, and early products are expected to remain expensive.

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▲ Picture source SK Hynix official website, the same below

Note: HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) refers to the vertical connection of multiple DRAMs, which can significantly increase the data processing speed. HBM DRAM products are HBM (first generation), HBM2 (second generation), HBM2E (third generation ), HBM3 (fourth generation), HBM3E (fifth generation) sequential development. HBM3E is the extended (Extended) version of HBM3.

SK hynix said: “Based on the only mass production experience of HBM3, the company has successfully developed the world’s highest performance extended version HBM3E. And with the industry’s largest HBM supply experience and mass production maturity, it will start investing in the first half of next year. Mass production of the HBM3E cements a unique position in the AI-oriented memory market.”

According to reports, in terms of speed, this product can process up to 1.15TB (terabytes) of data per second. It is equivalent to processing 230 Full-HD (FHD) class movies (5 gigabytes, 5GB) in 1 second.

At the same time, the SK hynix technical team adopted the latest technology of Advanced MR-MUF on this product, and its heat dissipation performance has been improved by 10% compared with the previous generation. HBM3E also has backward compatibility (Backward compatibility), so customers can directly adopt new products in systems based on HBM3 without modifying its design or structure.

Ian Buck, vice president of Hyperscale and HPC at NVIDIA, said: “Nvidia has had a long-standing collaboration with SK hynix for HBM, which is used in state-of-the-art accelerated computing solutions (Accelerated Computing Solutions). AI computing, we look forward to the continued cooperation between the two companies in the field of HBM3E.”

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SK Hynix 24GB LPDDR5X memory introduction is as follows:

The 24GB LPDDR5X DRAM packaged product operates under the minimum voltage standard range of 1.01~1.12V (volts) specified by the International Organization for Standardization of Semiconductors (JEDEC). The data processing speed is 68GB per second, which is equivalent to transferring 13 Full-HD (FHD) movies per second.

SK Hynix has been mass-producing the new product since last month, supplying it to smartphone maker OPPO, which uses it in its latest flagship smartphone, the OnePlus Ace 2 Pro.

According to the report, the new memory adopts the HKMG process, a next-generation process that employs a high-K gate dielectric on the insulating film inside the DRAM transistor to prevent leakage and improve capacitance, while realizing ultra-low power consumption and high performance. SK Hynix adopted the HKMG process for the first time in the world for mobile DRAMs in November last year, and has successfully mass-produced LPDDR5X DRAMs, which not only increase the speed of memory, but also reduce power consumption.

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SK hynix announced that it will further improve 321-layer NAND flash memory and plans to start mass production in the first half of 2025.

SK Hynix 321-layer 1Tb TLC NAND attached is introduced as follows:

The 321-layer 1Tb TLC NAND is 59% more efficient than the previous generation’s 238-layer 512Gb. This is because the units of data storage can be stacked higher with more single-chip quantities, achieving greater storage capacity on the same chip, thereby increasing the output number of chips on a unit wafer.

In addition, SK hynix has launched next-generation NAND product solutions optimized for these needs: Enterprise SSD (eSSD) with PCIe 5 (Gen5) interface and UFS 4.0.

SK hynix also stated that based on the product technology accumulated so far and the continuous optimization of internal solutions in the enterprise, the company is actively developing next-generation PCI 6.0 and UFS 5.0 products in order to continue to lead the market in the future.

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