Jensen Huang asked SK hynix to give Nvidia 12-layer HBM4 chips earlier

12-layer HBM3E hardly off the manufacturing line

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang asked Korean chipmaker SK hynix to pull forward delivery of 12-layer HBM4 chips by half a year, according to the company's group chairman Chey Tae-won.

In a keynote speech at the SK AI Summit 2024 on Monday, Chey said he responded by deferring to CEO Kwak Noh-jung, who in turn promised to try.

The chips were originally set for delivery in the first half of 2026, but bringing the schedule forward by six months would see them released before the end of 2025. That's quite a tall order.

SK hynix's 12-layer HBM3E products were scheduled to be placed into the supply chain just this quarter – Q4 2024. Mass production of the most advanced chip to date only began in late September.

16-layer HBM3E samples are expected to be available in the first half of 2025, Kwak announced during the summit. The chips are made using Mass Reflow Molded Underfill (MR-MUF) process, a packaging technique that improves thermal management and was used on the 12-layer chips. There's more on them in our sister site, Blocks & Files.

The CEO described the 16-layer HBM3E chips as having an 18 percent improvement in learning performance and 32 percent improvement in inference performance over the 12-layer chips of the same generation.

Kwak also confirmed his company was developing LPCAMM2 module for PCs and datacenters, as well as 1cm based LPDDR5 and LPDDR6.

Huang made a video appearance at the summit, as did Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and TSMC CEO CC Wei.

As is customary at such events, all three praised their companies' respective partnerships with SK hynix, while Huang also reportedly said SK hynix's development plan was both "super aggressive" and "super necessary."

Nvidia accounts for more than 80 percent of the world's AI chip consumption.

SK hynix execs brushed off the notion of any AI chip oversupply in its recent Q3 2024 earnings call. HBM chip sales were reported up 330 percent year-on-year.

SK Group chairman Choi Tae-won predicted in a speech this week that the AI market will likely baloon further in or around 2027 due to the emergence of the next-generation ChatGPT. ®