SK Hynix Celebrates 41st Anniversary: "Maintaining No.1 Leadership in HBM and Leading AI Era in Next-Gen Markets"

Celebrating 41st Anniversary on the 10th
Started Semiconductor Business in 1983
Focusing on HBM Development Amid AI-Centered Market Restructuring
HBM Influence Expands Across Memory Sector

SK Hynix, celebrating its 41st anniversary, expressed its ambition to "prepare for another leap forward based on its past history."

SK Hynix Icheon Headquarters
[Image source=Yonhap News]

On the 10th, SK Hynix announced through its newsroom, "While maintaining leadership as the number one in High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), we aim to secure dominance in the next-generation semiconductor market and lead the era of 'The Heart of AI,' where all products operate as the core driving force of artificial intelligence (AI)."

SK Hynix began its semiconductor business in 1983 and established itself as a strong player in the global memory market. Its recent activities have been particularly notable. Since the emergence of generative AI in 2022, various products and services have been reorganized around AI. Recognizing this change, SK Hynix has focused more on developing HBM, which rapidly transfers large volumes of data with high bandwidth, strengthening its foundation.

It secured market leadership and expanded its influence through HBM2E. In this process, it attracted attention by applying MR-MUF (Mass Reflow Molded UnderFill) technology, which offers excellent heat dissipation and productivity, to HBM2E. Subsequently, it gained significant attention with HBM3, optimized for AI and high-performance computing (HPC), and most importantly, became a key partner in the AI and data center markets by supplying this memory to NVIDIA (USA). Around this time, SK Hynix achieved a 50% market share in HBM, establishing its status as a leader in HBM. Last year, it developed the highest-performance HBM3E (5th generation) and began supplying products to global top IT companies starting this year. Advanced MR-MUF technology, which excels in thin chip stacking, heat dissipation, and productivity, was applied to both HBM3 and HBM3E to enhance performance. It successfully mass-produced 12-layer (24GB) HBM3 last year and 12-layer (36GB) HBM3E this year.

Leveraging its technological prowess, aggressive investments and market expansion efforts were also made. In April, it signed an investment agreement to build an advanced packaging production base in Indiana, USA. Next-generation HBM and AI memory will be intensively produced there. In the same month, it also signed a technology agreement with TSMC (Taiwan).

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won visited SK Hynix's Icheon Campus in Icheon City, Gyeonggi Province, last August to inspect the HBM production site along with key executives of SK Hynix.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

Building on the success of HBM, SK Hynix is developing various AI memories. It has expanded its product lineup to include PIM (Processing-in-Memory), CXL (Compute eXpress Link), AI SSD, and more. Furthermore, in line with diversified AI services, it is focusing on developing customized AI memories optimized for each customer and is also developing next-generation emerging memories based on innovative devices. The AI memory market is expected to continue thriving. Accordingly, SK Hynix anticipates achieving tangible results. The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) forecasts that the semiconductor market will expand by 16% compared to last year. In particular, memory semiconductors are expected to grow by a remarkable 76.8%, citing the explosive demand increase for AI memories such as HBM as a growth factor.

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