Samsung has announced it has started mass production of its HBM4 and has sshipped first commercial products to customers. With the 6th generation 10-nanometer-class DRAM process (1c), the company has managed to achieve stable yields and is now shipping these 11.7Gbps chips.
According to Samsung, with a constant 11.7Gbps transfer rate per pin, which can be further tuned to 13Gbps, HBM4 is about 46 percent faster than the 8Gbps industry standard, and 1.22x faster than HBM3E. The new HBM4 from Samsung provides 3.3TB/s of memory bandwidth per stack, or 2.7x more compared to the HBM3E. The aforementioned 10nm-class (1c) manufacturing process also brings a 40 percent power-efficiency improvement, 10 percent better thermal resistance, and 30 percent improvement in heat dissipation, according to Samsung.
When it comes to capacity, Samsung will offer 12-layer stacks ranging from 24GB to 36GB, with 16-layer stacks of 48GB coming at a later date for certain customers.
“Instead of taking the conventional path of utilizing existing proven designs, Samsung took the leap and adopted the most advanced nodes like the 1c DRAM and 4nm logic process for HBM4,” said Sang Joon Hwang, Executive Vice President and Head of Memory Development at Samsung Electronics. “By leveraging our process competitiveness and design optimization, we are able to secure substantial performance headroom, enabling us to satisfy our customers’ escalating demands for higher performance, when they need them.”
Samsung will continue to expand its HBM4 productions capacites and expects sales to triple this year. Samsung also announced it plans HBM4E sampling for the second half of this year, with first samples reaching customers in 2027.
