Samsung Electronics said on May 29 it had shipped the world’s first HBM4E 12-layer samples to global customers. The move follows within months of the successful start of mass shipments of HBM4. HBM4E supports a per-pin speed of 14 Gbps as standard and up to 16 Gbps, which is more than a 20 percent improvement from its predecessor, HBM4. It provides bandwidth of 3.6 terabytes per second per stack. Samsung Electronics plans to proceed with mass production supply in line with customer schedules.

Capacity is 48 GB for the HBM4E 12-layer product, up more than 30 percent from its predecessor. The company plans to add 32 GB (8-layer) and 64 GB (16-layer) lineups in the future. Energy efficiency improved 16 percent from the previous product, and thermal resistance improved by more than 14 percent, the company said. It said the gains came from applying low-power design and packaging structure optimization technology.

The product uses the 1c (10-nanometre-class, sixth-generation) DRAM already applied in its predecessor HBM4, combined with an in-house foundry 4-nanometre logic die. With the same configuration already verified in mass production of HBM4, an assessment has emerged that the likelihood of transitioning to mass production is high. The company said the structure secures both process stability and yield.

Samsung Electronics began mass shipments of HBM4 in February, the first in the world, and is currently expanding customer supply. In December last year, it recorded a speed of 11.7 Gbps in a system-in-package (SiP) test, the final certification stage, receiving a top-tier evaluation. Global customers are giving HBM4 a positive assessment in terms of speed and power efficiency, the company said.

Samsung Electronics plans to secure supply stability based on a one-stop turnkey solution spanning memory, foundry, system LSI and advanced packaging.

Hwang Sang-joon (황상준), a vice president in charge of development at Samsung Electronics' memory business, said, "Following the success of mass production of HBM4, we have also completed the supply of next-generation HBM4E samples without a hitch, firmly imprinting Samsung Electronics' unrivalled technology leadership on the market." He added, "We will continue to strongly lead the growth of the global AI memory market based on an overwhelming technology gap and proactive investment in production infrastructure."