SK Hynix announces its next-generation, "world's fastest" high-bandwidth memory

SK Hynix has introduced its next step after Gen-2 high-bandwidth memory (HBM2). The company asserts that this new HBM2E standard is capable of up to 50% bumps in bandwidth (up to 460GB/s) while increasing capacities from 8 to 16GB.

The manufacturer claims that its new HBM2E has speeds of up to 3.6Gbps per pin, and has 1024 data I/Os. They make up an individual chip of 16Gb in capacity. 8 of these can go to make up a single 16GB stack, which SK Hynix has achieved as a result of its Through Silicon Via (TSV) technology.

HBM2E also has the advantage of being able to interconnect with other chipsets (GPUs, for example) more directly compared to relying on a board for its mounting. This may make its interactions with other components smoother compared to other solutions such as commercial DRAM. SK Hynix will direct its new HBM2E memory at purchasers in the machine learning, AI, or supercomputer spaces, or, of course, those who make high-end graphics cards.