Samsung Electronics has unveiled plans to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips by increasing the supply of high-end chips, as it aims to capitalise on the booming global memory chip market.
The South Korean tech giant, known as the world’s largest memory chip maker, reported a remarkable over 10-fold rise in first-quarter operating profit. This outlook has propelled Samsung’s shares up by 1.8% as of Tuesday, 30th April.
Despite the positive momentum, Samsung’s shares have experienced a slight decline of 0.8% since the beginning of the year, trailing behind its competitor SK Hynix, which has seen a 24% gain. Samsung aims to narrow this gap by ramping up its supply of top-end chips, particularly high bandwidth memory (HBM), a key component in AI chipsets.
Reuters reports that Jaejune Kim, a vice president at Samsung’s memory division, has announced plans to increase the supply of HBM-related chips by more than three-fold compared to 2023. This has seen Samsung begin mass production of its latest HBM chips, the 8-layer HBM3E, targeting the burgeoning market for generative AI chipsets.
Samsung’s strategy involves introducing the 12-layer version of HBM3 during second quarter 2024, with expectations that the latest HBM3E products will constitute two-thirds of its HBM output by the end of the year. Analysts view these targets as aggressive but feasible, given Samsung’s technological advantage in high-stacking capabilities.
Samsung’s efforts to improve the yield of its 12-layer product show that it is determined to meeting the growing demand for AI chips, and beat its competitors. The company has yet to provide specific details regarding its HBM customers, however.
