AMD chief executive Lisa Su headed to South Korea to lock down supply, and Samsung now says AMD has secured HBM4 capacity for Instinct MI455X AI accelerators.
The snag is that AMD is still playing catch-up to Nvidia on Samsung’s HBM4 queue, which is not where you want to be when supplies are tight.
Samsung’s announcement ties HBM4 to AMD’s next AI GPU and throws in memory work for server chips, which reads as a broader deal than AMD planned.
Samsung said, “Under the MOU, Samsung and AMD will align on primary HBM4 supply for the next-generation AMD AI accelerator, the AMD Instinct MI455X GPU, as well as advanced DRAM solutions for 6th Gen AMD EPYC CPUs, codenamed ‘Venice.” These technologies will support next-generation AI systems that combine AMD Instinct GPUs, AMD EPYC CPUs, and rack-scale architectures such as the AMD Helios platform.
Samsung has been riding a run of good press in HBM lately, after pushing HBM3 and HBM3E hard enough to get noticed by the AI crowd.
Its HBM4 is being pitched as particularly tasty, with pin speeds up to 13 Gbps, and that has turned it into the memory everyone suddenly cannot live without.
NVIDIA moved early to secure Samsung HBM4 capacity for Vera Rubin, leaving AMD to negotiate from the second seat.
For Samsung, that means it can ask for more than a simple memory purchase order and it sounds like foundry work is part of the price.
Chosun Biz reports that Samsung has maintained conditions for producing some of AMD’s “advanced” AI chips at Samsung Foundry, though the details remain murky.
The report hints that the foundry angle could cover accelerators rather than CPUs, which would put AMD silicon closer to Samsung’s process roadmap.
There have been rumours that Samsung wanted to build EPYC Venice on SF2, but the Korean report leans towards AI chips rather than the server CPU line.
Samsung Foundry has been talking up momentum with deals for NVIDIA, Tesla and the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple, and AMD joining the list would not hurt its swagger.
Job’s Mob being in the customer roll call gives Samsung extra bragging rights, even if AMD only wants memory and a quiet life.
