On January 10, according to Reuters and other foreign media reports, SK hynix held a press conference on "Memory, the Power of AI" during the CES 2024 exhibition. Kwak Noh-jung, President and CEO of SK hynix, said that the market value of SK hynix may double from the current 100 trillion won to 200 trillion won in three years, benefiting from the demand for AI.
Although SK hynix is also facing the dilemma of declining the entire memory chip market in 2023, thanks to the surge in demand for HBM (high-bandwidth memory) brought about by the AI chip boom, SK hynix's market value jumped to the second largest in South Korea in December last year, second only to rival Samsung Electronics.
In the era of artificial intelligence, the direction of memory development should be to process data at the fastest speed, in the most efficient way, and with a larger capacity. This is in line with the evolution of memory over the past century, where memory density, speed, and bandwidth have all increased.
At present, SK hynix is a leader in HBM market share and technology R&D in the field of generative AI, and its customers are NVIDIA and AMD. Kwak Noh-Jung said, "There are only three companies that can make HBM (SK hynix, Samsung, and Micron). What I can say for sure is that we are the clear leaders in this area. ”
We provide the market and industry with a diverse range of ultra-high-performance products, such as the world's best and most sought-after products, the world's best and most sought-after products, the industry's largest capacity server memory TSV DIMM, the world's fastest mobile memory LPDDR5 Turbo, and best-in-class server DIMMs. In the future, we will build on our existing product lineup to hone our technology leadership in the AI era by providing bandwidth-focused HBM4 and HBM4E, power-improved LPCAMM, capacity-expanding CXL and QLC storage, and PIM with computing power." Kwak Noh-Jung further said.
Kwak Noh-Jung also said that storage plays a key role in the AI era, and SK hynix plans to launch a "customized storage platform" to provide customized AI storage solutions in line with customers' growing demand for diversified storage products. "We will bring our memory expertise and R&D expertise to the AI system to achieve the best possible integration with the needs of our customers. The platform will go beyond traditional approaches to deliver a new value proposition, providing each customer with the memory solution that best suits their needs. ”
Currently, SK hynix is preparing a new memory manufacturing base covering more than 4.15 million square meters with an investment of more than 120 trillion won (92.7 billion U.S. dollars). Such a large production capacity will enable SK hynix to continue to serve existing customers and deliver products in a timely manner to cope with the growth in demand for AI memory.
Last year, in order to cope with the decline in the demand for memory chips, upstream memory chip manufacturers such as SK hynix implemented production reduction measures.
In response, Kwak Noh-Jung said, "It is possible that the DRAM production reduction plan will be changed in Q1 (January-March 2024), and NAND Flash may also take the same measures (change the production reduction plan) after the first half of the year."
DRAM is showing signs of recovery, but NAND Flash is recovering more slowly. Kwak Noh-Jung said.
Editor: Xinzhixun-Rogue Sword.