SEOUL, February 26 (AJP) - South Korean chipmaker SK hynix and U.S. data storage company Sandisk have partnered to standardize a next-generation memory technology dubbed High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) to target the expanding artificial intelligence inference market.
The two companies held a kick-off event for the HBF standardization consortium on Thursday at Sandisk's headquarters in Milpitas, California. To advance the initiative, they will form a dedicated joint workstream under the Open Compute Project (OCP), a global data center technology cooperative.
The collaboration comes as the AI industry's focus rapidly shifts from training large language models (LLMs) to the inference stage, which powers actual user services. Existing memory structures face limitations in simultaneously handling the massive data loads and power efficiency required for surging, concurrent AI requests.
HBF is positioned as a new memory tier sitting between ultra-fast High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and high-capacity Solid State Drives (SSDs). It is designed to bridge the gap by offering capacity scalability and power efficiency, ultimately aiming to lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) for AI systems. While HBM will continue to handle maximum bandwidth requirements, HBF will serve a complementary role.
"The core of AI infrastructure goes beyond the performance competition of a single technology; it is about optimizing the entire ecosystem," said Ahn Hyun, Chief Development Officer at SK hynix.
Industry demand for such complex, hybrid memory solutions is projected to see significant growth around 2030. SK hynix and Sandisk plan to utilize their combined expertise in memory design, packaging, and mass production to accelerate the standardization and commercialization of the product.
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