SK hynix wins IEEE Corporate Innovation Award, bolstering HBM leadership

SK hynix has won the Corporate Innovation Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, an honor often likened to a Nobel Prize in the electrical and electronics field. It is the first time a South Korean company has received the award for technology in the pure memory segment, the company said Sunday.
 
SK hynix said it received the award at the “2026 IEEE Awards” ceremony held in the United States. IEEE is a leading academic society with more than 400,000 engineering and science professionals in 160 countries. The Corporate Innovation Award is decided through a strict review of technical achievement and the technology’s impact on industry and society.
 
IEEE recognized SK hynix for its work on high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, including stable mass production across generations since it began full-scale development in 2009 and its contribution to building the global artificial intelligence ecosystem, the company said.
 
The company said it was the first South Korean firm in the semiconductor field to receive an IEEE award. It was credited with addressing data bottlenecks that had long challenged AI computing and pushing past technical limits, earning high marks from academia and industry. Samsung Electronics won the same IEEE Corporate Innovation Award in 2010 for its WiMAX (WiBro) technology, the article said.
 
SK hynix’s HBM first appeared in December 2013 through joint research with AMD. Early on, it was viewed as a niche technology with low profitability because of demanding processes and technical constraints. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won backed long-term investment, providing continued research and development support worth tens of trillions of won, the article said. SK hynix later developed proprietary process innovations including through-silicon vias, or TSV, and MR-MUF, and became a key partner to global big tech companies including Nvidia.
 
In February, Chey said at the U.S. Trans-Pacific Dialogue event, “This monster chip (HBM) is making our company a lot of money, and our current margin is over 60%,” adding, “We need to make more monster chips.”
 
The article said the company’s focus has translated into results. SK hynix posted first-quarter revenue of 52.5763 trillion won and operating profit of 37.6103 trillion won, setting record highs for a fourth straight quarter. According to securities-industry consensus forecasts cited in the article, SK hynix’s annual revenue this year is projected at 358.0370 trillion won, with operating profit expected to reach as high as 277.7000 trillion won. If those estimates are realized, the company would rank around fourth globally, ahead of Microsoft (245 trillion won) and Alphabet (240 trillion won), the article said.