Samsung Electronics said Tuesday it has started the mass production of new dynamic random access memory chips, which have more than seven times the data processing speed of current DRAM chips.

The ultrafast solution is the second generation of the company’s first high-bandwidth memory DRAM or HBM DRAM that was produced in 2013. The latest 4-gigabyte version has doubled the speed at lower energy consumption.
The new HBM2 DRAM chips are expected to be especially useful for higher-performance computing such as parallel computing, graphics rendering and machine learning where global IT companies are pouring resources recently.

Samsung said the breakthrough came by applying an advanced packing technology, called Through Silicon Via or TSV, which punches fine holes in chips and vertically connects their electrodes for higher efficiency.

Samsung has continued to expand its presence in the high-performance DRAM market. In October last year, the company started the mass production of the 128-gigabyte Double Data Rate 5 or DDR4 DRAM, another ultrafast memory chip.

With the new HBM2 DRAM, the company pins high hopes on its adoption of the next-generation graphics chips that help the works of a central processing unit of a computer.

Samsung said it plans to produce the next 8-gigabyte HBM2 DRAM package within the first half of this year. Specialized in graphics cards, it will offer more optimal solutions for compact devices that require high-level graphics computing capabilities, the company said.

“The new HBM2 DRAM will greatly contribute to the timely adoption of high-performance computing by global IT companies,” said Jeon Se-won, a marketing chief of Samsung’s memory business division.

Samsung plans to expand the HBM lineup to strengthen its leadership position in the market and to tap into the new markets for network systems and enterprise servers based on the chips. Along with Samsung, SK hynix has also jumped on the HBM bandwagon.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)