Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group, through the SK AI Summit in Seoul, South Korea, on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. SK Hynix is working with Nvidia to resolve the availability bottleneck, Chey mentioned.
Jean Chung | Bloomberg | Getty Pictures
Shares of SK Hynix rallied 6.5% on Monday after the enterprise introduced a next-generation reminiscence chip and the dad or mum firm’s chair mentioned that the South Korean semiconductor agency sped up the availability of a key product to Nvidia.
Talking on the firm’s occasion on Monday, Chey Tae-won, chair of SK Group, ran via an anecdote by which he mentioned Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang requested him if SK Hynix may transfer the availability of high-bandwidth reminiscence (HBM) chips referred to as HBM4 ahead by six months. SK Hynix’s CEO on the time mentioned it was doable to take action, in line with Chey.
It is unclear if this may shift SK Hynix’s manufacturing timeline from the previously-announced second-half of 2025.
Excessive-bandwidth reminiscence is a key part of Nvidia’s chips, that are in flip used to coach large synthetic intelligence fashions. Tech giants world wide have been snapping up Nvidia chips in a bid to provide probably the most highly effective fashions and functions.
SK Hynix is a key provider to Nvidia, and the massive demand for the American firm’s merchandise has helped the South Korean agency to attain fast progress this yr and file income.
SK Hynix shares are up round 36% this yr.
On Monday, the corporate additionally introduced a brand new product that helped assist its share value rally. Samples of the chip — a 16-layer HBM — might be offered to prospects in early 2025, SK Hynix mentioned.
HBM is a sort of dynamic random entry reminiscence, generally known as DRAM, the place chips are vertically stacked to avoid wasting house and scale back energy consumption. Including extra layers to a HBM will, in idea, give it extra capability to deal with complicated AI functions.
The aggressive roadmap from SK Hynix 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.
