SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung has highlighted the company’s advancements in AI memory at the SK AI Summit in Seoul, unveiling the world’s first 48GB 16-high HBM3E memory with a record number of layers.

Here are the main points from his speech:
SK Hynix’s aim is to become a “Full Stack AI Memory Provider,” offering a complete line of AI memory products in both DRAM and NAND spaces.
Memory technology has progressed from “personal” use in devices to the “connected” world through cloud services, and will expand to power “creativity and experience” in AI.
The 16-high HBM3E provides substantial performance improvements — 18 percent in training and 32 percent in inference compared to 12-high models. SK Hynix plans to start customer sampling early next year.
SK Hynix will apply the Advanced MR-MUF process used in 12-high products to the 16-high HBM3E, along with a backup hybrid bonding technology. It is also developing the LPCAMM2 module for PCs and data centers, alongside next-gen PCIe SSDs and LPDDR6.
In collaboration with a top logic foundry, SK Hynix will optimize HBM products to meet demands for AI systems. CXL Fabrics technology will support high memory capacity through interconnects, while advanced eSSDs will store more data efficiently.
The company is exploring computational memory technologies, such as Processing near Memory (PNM), Processing in Memory (PIM), and Computational Storage, to address the “memory wall” and power AI systems of the future.