SK Hynix is investing heavily in new DRAM and NAND fabs as the memory market faces prolonged shortages driven by soaring AI demands, while pioneering a new high-bandwidth flash standard aimed at transforming data centre technology.
SK Hynix is moving to expand chipmaking capacity at a time when memory supply remains tight and artificial intelligence demand continues to outpace production. The company says it will build a new DRAM fab and a new NAND fab, a move that underscores how quickly memory demand is rising across data centres and consumer devices. Related industry reporting has warned that the market could remain constrained for years, with demand growth running well ahead of supply. (tomshardware.com)
The investment comes as SK Hynix and SanDisk push a separate effort to reshape memory architecture for AI systems. The companies have published the first technical specification for High Bandwidth Flash, or HBF, an open standard intended to combine the bandwidth profile of high-bandwidth memory with the larger capacity and persistence of NAND flash. The initial specification covers packages of up to 512GB using 8-high and 16-high NAND stacks, with bandwidth tiers from roughly 0.4TB/s to 3.0TB/s, and it uses UCIe, the chiplet interconnect standard, for system integration. Tom’s Hardware reported that only Google and Tenstorrent have joined the consortium so far. (tomshardware.com)
That broader context helps explain why SK Hynix is spending so heavily now. TechRadar reported that industry expectations place commercial HBF adoption somewhere between late 2027 and 2028, with first AI inference devices using the technology expected earlier, but still not soon enough to relieve the current memory squeeze. In practical terms, the new fabs and the new flash standard point to the same conclusion: the industry is preparing for a longer period of scarcity, particularly as AI infrastructure keeps pulling more capacity into high-margin uses. (techradar.com)
Disclaimer: This content is intended for informational purposes only. Readers are advised to exercise their own judgement, conduct due diligence, or consult a qualified expert before acting on any information provided.
