Samsung develops industry’s first 36GB HBM3E 12H DRAM

Samsung, the world leader in semiconductor memory chips, has announced that it has developed the industry’s first 12-stack HBM3E DRAM chip. It is the world’s highest-capacity HBM memory chip to date, and the company claims that it offers 50% higher capacity and performance than previous-generation HBM memory chips.

Samsung unveils industry’s first 36GB HBM3E DRAM chip

According to Samsung, its HBM3E 12H chip offers a bandwidth of up to 1,280GB/s and a capacity of up to 36GB. That is 50% higher than current-generation HBM3 8H chips with eight stacks.

It uses an advanced Thermal Compression Non-Conductive Film (TC NCF) that allows 12-layer products to have the same height as 8-layer HBM chips. This eases compatibility and improves the flexibility of system builders. It also offers added benefits, including mitigating chip die wrapping that comes with a thinner die.

Samsung says that its HBM3E chips have the industry’s smallest gap between chips: 7µm. This eliminates voids between the layers inside the chip and enhances vertical density by 20% compared to 8-layer HBM3 chips.

Samsung’s new TC NCF technology improves thermals inside HBM chips by using bumps of varying sizes between the chips. Smaller bumps are used in areas for signaling, while larger bumps are used in spots that require heat dissipation. Samsung claims that this method also improves the yield of the product. These chips can be used in systems that require higher memory capacity.

HBM3E chips can increase AI training speed by 34%

Enterprises using these new chips can get higher performance and capacity and reduce the total cost of ownership in data centers. When used for AI applications, the average speed of AI training can be completed 34% faster, while simultaneous uses of services can be increased by 11.5 times.

Samsung says it has begun sending samples of its HBM3E 12H chips to customers, and mass production will begin in the first half of this year.

Yongcheol Bae, Executive Vice President of Memory Product Planning at Samsung Electronics, said, “The industry’s AI service providers are increasingly requiring HBM with higher capacity, and our new HBM3E 12H product has been designed to answer that need. This new memory solution forms part of our drive toward developing core technologies for high-stack HBM and providing technological leadership for the high-capacity HBM market in the AI era.”