SK Hynix develops second-generation hbm2 with 50 percent higher bandwidth

SK Hynix has announced its hbm2e dram. This successor to high bandwidth memory 2 offers a fifty percent higher bandwidth and a capacity twice as high as hbm2. It is not known when the dram generation will go into mass production.

SK Hynix’ hbm2e offers a speed of 3.6Gbit/s per pin for a total bandwidth of 460GB/s per stack. The Korean manufacturer stacks eight 16Gbit chips vertically for a stack, which offers a capacity of 16GB. SK Hynix reports that the video memory is intended for high-end GPUs, supercomputers, machine learning and artificial intelligence systems.

It is unknown when the Korean memory manufacturer will start mass production and delivery of hbm2e. In March competitor Samsung already announced its hbm2e module. This has a somewhat lower bandwidth than the SK Hynix offer. AMD uses hbm2 from SK Hynix for its Vega GPUs. Nvidia uses hbm2 for its data center GPUs.

Hbm2e is an extension of the hbm2 standard. The specification of the successor hbm3 should be released this year and that standard would offer a bandwidth of 512GB/s or more, according to SemiEngineering. The Jedec semiconductor standardization organization is also working on the hbm3+ and hbm4 standards, which are expected to be published in 2022 and 2024, respectively.