SEOUL, September 01 (AJP) -Samsung Electronics is betting on denser, faster and cooler memory to strengthen its position in the HBM race as artificial intelligence drives a fundamental shift in the global memory market.
Its new “CUBE” strategy is designed to pack more memory into the same space while shortening the physical distance data must travel — a combination Samsung says can increase bandwidth while reducing power consumption and heat.
The strategy comes as Samsung seeks to challenge SK hynix's commanding lead in high-bandwidth memory, the premium stacked memory used alongside AI accelerators.
SK hynix controlled 58 percent of the global HBM market by revenue in the first quarter of 2026, compared with 21 percent for Samsung and 21 percent for Micron, according to Counterpoint Research.
Choi Jang-seok, vice president and head of memory product planning at Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions division, laid out the strategy Tuesday at the Memory Executive Summit in Taipei, held ahead of SEMICON Taiwan 2026.
CUBE stands for Capacity, Utilization, Bandwidth and Efficiency, four areas Samsung sees as increasingly interconnected as AI systems require larger amounts of memory to feed data to increasingly powerful processors.
At its core, the strategy is about building upward and shortening the journey data has to make.
Under Capacity, Samsung wants to increase memory vertically rather than consuming more circuit-board space.
“Memory capacity will no longer be constrained by PCB area,” Choi said, saying vertical expansion would allow more memory without enlarging the board footprint. Utilization addresses what happens inside those taller memory structures.
Samsung is optimizing the placement of logic and memory so data does not have to travel unnecessarily far before it is processed.
“3D is not simply about stacking,” Choi said. “What matters is how each floor is utilized.”
By drastically shortening the distance between dies, Samsung aims to create what Choi called a “vertical highway” that allows much larger volumes of data to move through the memory stack at higher speed.
The fourth component, Efficiency, tackles the cost of moving that data. “The ultimate goal of 3D is to reduce the energy required to move a single bit of data,” Choi said.
Reducing that distance matters increasingly in HBM because adding more layers and moving more data generates both greater power consumption and heat. Samsung's strategy is therefore not simply to stack more memory, but to make the entire vertical structure more efficient.
HBM5 raises the stakes
Samsung is applying the same approach to its next generations of HBM as it seeks to improve its competitive position in AI memory.
The company is developing HBM5 with a target of delivering twice the performance of HBM4E, while improving performance per watt by 20 percent and cutting thermal resistance by 20 percent.
Further out, Samsung is developing zHBM, targeting eight times HBM4E's performance, three times its performance per watt and a 75 percent to 90 percent reduction in thermal resistance.
Samsung is also working on zNAND-O, a product intended to bridge some of the traditional gap between DRAM's speed and NAND's capacity.
The company says zNAND-O will offer 10 times the bit density of DRAM while delivering seven times the read bandwidth and power efficiency of conventional NAND. Sampling is planned for 2028.
The push comes as AI changes the economics of the memory industry.
Samsung still commands greater scale across the broader memory market. Counterpoint Research put its share of global DRAM revenue at 39 percent in the second quarter of 2026, ahead of SK hynix at 26 percent and Micron at 25 percent.
But HBM presents a different competitive picture.
SK hynix's early lead in supplying advanced HBM for AI accelerators has given it a much larger share of the premium segment. Samsung's challenge is to leverage its broader DRAM technology and massive manufacturing footprint to capture more of a market becoming increasingly central to memory makers' growth and profitability.
SEMICON Taiwan, organized by semiconductor industry association SEMI, runs from Sept. 2 through Sept. 4. The Memory Executive Summit was held Tuesday ahead of the main exhibition.
AJP Takeaways
- Samsung Electronics unveiled its CUBE strategy — Capacity, Utilization, Bandwidth and Efficiency — to make next-generation HBM denser, faster and more power-efficient.
- Samsung is developing HBM5 and zHBM with major improvements in performance, power efficiency and thermal resistance as AI accelerators demand increasingly advanced memory.
- Samsung's strategy centers on vertical scaling and shorter data paths, rather than simply adding more memory layers, to tackle the bandwidth, power and heat constraints of AI computing.
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