According to Korean media reports, in order to meet the growing demand of the artificial intelligence AI market, Samsung Electronics will mass-produce HBM memory chips in the second half of 2023.

The report pointed out that the 16GB and 24GB capacity HBM3 memory chips to be mass-produced by Samsung Electronics can transmit data up to 6.4Gbps. In addition, Samsung Electronics also plans to launch HBM3P products with higher performance and capacity in the second half of this year.

Starting in the fourth quarter of this year, Samsung is expected to begin supplying HBM3 to North American GPU manufacturers. As a result, HBM3 sales’ share of Samsung’s total DRAM sales is expected to expand from 6% in 2023 to 18% in 2024.

In recent years, the demand for AI servers and AI chips has continued to rise simultaneously. According to market research firm TrendForce, the shipments of AI servers (including GPUs, FPGAs, ASICs, etc.) and AI chips will increase by 38.4% and 46% annually in 2023, respectively.

In the future, driven by the further strong momentum of AI server shipments, more memory usage will be stimulated, which will simultaneously drive the increase in HBM market demand. According to TrendForce’s research, currently high-end AI server GPUs equipped with HBM have become the mainstream. It is estimated that global HBM demand will increase by nearly 60% annually in 2023 to 290 million GB, and will grow by another 30% in 2024.

From the perspective of market size, at present, the HBM market is mainly occupied by the three major manufacturers. In terms of market share in 2022, SK Hynix has a 50% market share, while Samsung and Micron have 40% and 10% respectively.

Although the HBM market is currently in its infancy, accounting for only about 1.5% of the entire DRAM market, with the advent of the era of artificial intelligence, global cloud operators have increased their investment in AI servers year by year, and the demand for HBM products is expected to increase rapidly in the future. TrendForce predicts that from 2023 to 2025, the compound annual growth rate of the HBM market is expected to increase to more than 40%-45%.