Nvidia hitting the gas on green light for Samsung's HBM chips, CEO says

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Nvidia hitting the gas on green light for Samsung's HBM chips, CEO says

Published: 24 Nov. 2024, 15:20 Updated: 26 Nov. 2024, 12:57

KIM JU-YEON
[email protected]

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks to the media after receiving an honorary degree from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong on Nov. 23. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

Nvidia is working as fast as it can to certify Samsung's AI memory chips, CEO Jensen Huang said Saturday.

Huang made the remarks to the press after attending a ceremony at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where he was given an honorary doctorate in engineering, Bloomberg reported.

The CEO said Nvidia was looking into ways to purchase eight-layer and 12-layer high bandwidth memory 3E (HBM3E) chips from Samsung Electronics. Nvidia currently gets the majority of its HBM chips from SK hynix, the world’s first mass-producer of 12-layer HBM3E.

He had not mentioned Samsung when talking about Nvidia’s major suppliers, naming SK hynix and Micron, in a third quarter post-earnings call with analysis earlier this week, Bloomberg noted.

Samsung said it was making “significant progress” in supplying the memory chips to key clients, including Nvidia, in a conference call for its third quarter earnings on Oct. 31.

“We have made significant process by completing critical steps in the quality testing with key clients, which should enable expanded sales in the fourth quarter,” Samsung Electronics Executive Vice President Kim Jae-june said, adding that the company plans to “release improved HBM3E chips based on the timeline of next-generation GPUs that [their] major clients are working on.”

Samsung Electronics has been lagging in the AI chip market — chasing after domestic rival SK hynix and facing stiff competition from Chinese companies — leading to chip division head Jun Young-hyun issuing an unprecedented apology in early October after the business missed its third quarter consensus.

The chipmaker is hoping for a breakthrough with its HBM chips, the premium memory chip that stacks dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) to empower AI processors, to supply to Nvidia. It received approval for its fourth-generation HBM chips, but only for Nvidia's H20 GPU, in July.

Samsung is reportedly struggling with producing DRAM with a yield rate that is competitive with SK hynix. In the meantime, major Chinese players are expanding their shares in the legacy DRAM market as well as demonstrating technological advancement that is expected to accelerate.

BY KIM JU-YEON [[email protected]]