SK Hynix's HBM3E Yield Rate Approaches 80%

TapTechNews May 23rd news, Kwon Jae-soon, the production supervisor of SK Hynix, recently told the Financial Times that the yield rate of the company's HBM3E memory has approached 80%.

Compared to traditional memory products, the manufacturing process of HBM involves establishing Through Silicon Via (TSV) (TapTechNews note: Through Silicon Via) silicon vias between DRAM layers and multiple chip bonding, and the complexity has increased linearly. If there is a problem with one DRAM layer, it means the scrapping of the entire HBM stack.

Therefore, HBM memory, especially the HBM3E product with 8 or even 12 layers of stacking, is inherently inferior in yield rate to standard DRAM memory.

The South Korean media DealSite said in early March this year that the overall yield rate of HBM memory at that time was only about 65%. In this way, it seems that SK Hynix has achieved significant improvement in the process yield rate of HBM3E memory recently.

Kwon Jae-soon also mentioned that SK Hynix has currently reduced the production cycle of HBM3E by 50%. Shorter production time means higher production efficiency and can provide more sufficient supply for downstream customers such as NVIDIA.

This executive reconfirmed that the main focus of SK Hynix this year is to produce 8-layer stacked HBM3E, because this specification is currently the core of customer demand.

Kwon Jae-soon said: In this era of artificial intelligence, increasing production has become increasingly important to maintain a leading position.