The logo of SK hynix in Seongnam, South Korea, Monday, April 22, 2024.
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Shares of SK Hynix surged more than 9% Thursday morning, the company said. Mass production has started A new version of its high-bandwidth memory chips is scheduled to be delivered by the end of the year.
The product will be the world’s first 12-layer version of HBM3E, which refers to the latest generation of advanced memory chips capable of handling high-end generative artificial intelligence work.
SK Hynix said the chip will have a capacity of 36GB, the largest among existing HBM chips. A 50% increase in capacity compared to the company’s previous eight-layer chip, Mass production starts in MarchWhile maintaining the same thickness, the company said.
The Korean giant has been a major supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips for products such as NVIDIA. It plans to launch its latest product by the end of this year.
The development comes as the world’s second-largest memory chip maker seeks to continue its dominance of the artificial intelligence memory chip market.
HBM is a type of dynamic random access memory, called DRAM, in which dies are stacked vertically to save space and reduce power consumption. SK hynix, Micron Technology and Samsung Electronics are the three major manufacturers of HBM wafers.
Overnight, Micron released surprising fiscal first-quarter sales and profit forecasts in the U.S., signaling continued benefit from strong demand for HBM chips. The largest U.S. computer memory chip maker forecast first-quarter profit of $1.74 per share on revenue of $8.7 billion. That beat consensus forecasts for profit of $1.65 per share and revenue of $8.28 billion, According to the London Stock Exchange consensus estimate.
Asian chip stocks rose on Thursday morning, boosted by an upbeat forecast from Micron Technology and an announcement from SK Hynix. Tokyo Electronics climbed 7%, Advant test Jump 5%. Shares of Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chip maker, rose more than 3%.
South Korea’s benchmark blue-chip Kospi index rose 2%.
——Reuters contributed to this report.