South Korea’s SK Hynix is set to deepen its partnership with semiconductor giants TSMC and NVIDIA, with a significant announcement expected at the upcoming Semicon Taiwan in September. This move is anticipated to enhance TSMC’s position in the AI-driven market.
SK Hynix has a longstanding relationship with TSMC, and in 2022, it joined TSMC’s OIP 3DFabric Alliance. This partnership focuses on integrating memory and carrier boards to support CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) process compatibility and High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) interconnectivity. Kangwook Lee, Senior Vice President and PKG Development Director of SK Hynix, emphasized their close work on past and current HBM technologies.
The strengthened alliance will see SK Hynix collaborating more intensively with TSMC on future HBM generations, aiming for system-level product innovation. At Semicon Taiwan, SK Hynix President Kim Joo-sun will deliver a keynote speech, marking the company’s first special address at the event. Post-speech, discussions with TSMC senior executives and possibly NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang will outline the next-generation HBM cooperation plan.
SK Hynix plans to utilize TSMC’s advanced logic process for producing the basic interface chip (base die) of HBM4, set for mass production in 2026. HBM technology stacks core chips on these interface chips, connecting them vertically. While SK Hynix uses its own process for HBM3E, HBM4 will leverage TSMC’s logic process, promising over 20% lower power consumption than initially targeted.
This collaboration, solidified earlier this year, saw SK Group Chairman Choi Taiyuan meeting with NVIDIA’s Huang Jen-Hsun in April and visiting TSMC’s new chairman Wei Zhejia last month. The triad’s enhanced cooperation is poised to drive significant advancements in the semiconductor industry.
