Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group, throughout the SK AI Summit in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday, November 4, 2024. SK Hynix is working with Nvidia to unravel the availability bottleneck, Chey mentioned.
Jean Chung | Bloomberg | Getty Photographs
Shares of SK Hynix rose 6.5% on Monday after the corporate introduced a next-generation reminiscence chip and the mother or father firm’s chairman mentioned the South Korean semiconductor firm would block the availability of a key product to Nvidia.
Talking on the firm occasion on Monday, Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group, shared an anecdote wherein he mentioned that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang requested him if SK Hynix would enhance the availability of Excessive Bandwidth Reminiscence (HBM) chips, known as HBM4. may transfer six months forward. In keeping with Chey, the then CEO of SK Hynix mentioned this was potential.
It’s unclear whether or not this can shift SK Hynix’s manufacturing timeline from the beforehand introduced second half of 2025.
Excessive-bandwidth reminiscence is a key element of Nvidia’s chips, which in flip are used to coach huge synthetic intelligence fashions. Tech giants all over the world have been shopping for up Nvidia chips in an effort to supply essentially the most highly effective fashions and functions.
SK Hynix is a key provider to Nvidia, and big demand for the American firm’s merchandise has helped the South Korean firm obtain fast development and document income this 12 months.
SK Hynix shares are up about 36% this 12 months.
On Monday, the corporate additionally introduced a brand new product that helped help the rally in inventory costs. Samples of the chip – a 16-layer HBM – will probably be offered to clients in early 2025, SK Hynix mentioned.
HBM is a kind of dynamic random-access reminiscence generally known as DRAM, the place chips are stacked vertically to avoid wasting area and cut back energy consumption. Including extra layers to an HBM will theoretically give it extra capability to deal with advanced AI functions.
SK Hynix’s aggressive roadmap comes as its closest rival Samsung, which has fallen behind in HBM, tries to stage a comeback and get its most superior chips licensed to be used by Nvidia.
