At the Hot Chips 2026 conference, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix presented differing strategies for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), a critical component for AI accelerators. These rival approaches aim to solve memory bottlenecks as AI workloads become more demanding.
Samsung focuses on evolving the HBM "base die," the logic chip at the bottom of the memory stack. The company moves this component to more advanced manufacturing processes. Samsung develops custom HBM, culminating in "zHBM" technology. It claims zHBM will dramatically boost power efficiency and bandwidth.
In contrast, SK hynix's roadmap emphasizes advanced packaging. The company bets on "hybrid bonding" as the core technology to enable stacking 20 or more layers of memory chips. SK hynix recently began customer qualification for its 16-layer HBM4. The company stressed that the competitive focus in HBM is shifting from memory performance to packaging technology.