SK Hynix expands its HBM2 memory catalog with new memories available in Q1 2017 and the memory catalog will be expanded in the coming years, with a new memory factory included.

3D-NAND V4

SK Hynix in November listed 3D-NAND V4 memories, which are made up of 72 layers and 256 Gbit, in the product catalog. The original information suggested that these memories originally should have hit the market in Q2 2017 and according to the most recent Hynix product catalog, this has been modified. According to the information, the 512 Gbit memories should arrive by the last quarter of the year.

NAND Flash before DRAM

The worldwide demand for NAND Flash memory is around the nines, so all manufacturers of this type of memory have a large market in which to work. We have already commented on this, the demand for this type of memory continues to be higher than production, therefore there is a supply problem, which causes the price of DDR4 RAM, especially, to be skyrocketing.

Currently Hynix's profits are based on DRAM memories, accounting for 72% of sales, while NAND Flash memory represents 25% of sales. A modification for Hynix is ​​not expected in the near future, according to the data, as the new SK Hynix factory will not be available until 2019.

High Brandwidth Memory 2

HBM2 is the new bet in the Hynix catalog, which has been on the table for a long time. The data shows different memories at different times this year. The first were the HBM2 that hit the market last year. Followed by the HBM2s that supposedly hit the market this quarter, with new speeds.

Hynix plans are not stable, so data may vary. Currently the company should launch the HBM2 with a frequency of 1.6GHz and a capacity of 4GB soon, which in theory will be used in AMD VEGA graphics cards, which will offer us a capacity of 8GB with a bandwidth of 409.6 GB / s. The bandwidth is lower than the memory used by the Fiji and also lower than the memory used in the Titan X Pascal, which is 480GB / s. This could indicate that in the end they would not use the Hynix and would choose to use the Samsung, like NVIDIA.

Whether they are used in VEGA or not will depend on how many modules are integrated in these graphs and everything indicates that they would use two modules. What seems unlikely is that AMD VEGA has eight modules of these memories, but as we know, AMD would use at least 8GB for cache memory. There is currently no information on the market about eight-stack HBM2 modules, which would add up to 16GB. Not even Hynix has memory of such density, so AMD VEGA could only have 8GB MBM2 working at 1.6GHz with a bandwidth of 410GB / s in total.

Also note that the Hynix product portfolio does not include GDDR5X memory. NVIDIA uses these GDDR5Xs in the NVIDIA Titan X Pascals, but in NVIDIA's case, these are made by Micron. AMD would also be interested in Hynix's GDDR5X, for the new series of AMD Radeon RX 500 Series graphics cards. These memories could be used in the mid-range, leaving the HBM2 for the high-end.

Source: VideocardZ