On March 13th, reports surfaced indicating a concerning trend in the realm of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and advanced packaging, which are emerging as new battlegrounds for semiconductor giants.
Currently, SK Hynix holds a dominant position in the HBM market, boasting a 54% share thanks to securing HBM3 orders for NVIDIA's AI GPUs.
However, the industry faces a significant challenge as the yield rate for Samsung's HBM chips remains disappointingly low, with figures peaking at a mere 20%.
Samsung, on the other hand, is lagging behind its competitors mainly due to lower yield rates of HBM chips. Rumors suggest that the yield rate for HBM3 chips is only between 10% to 20%, whereas SK Hynix boasts a yield rate of 60% to 70%.
Reportedly, to address this shortfall, Samsung is procuring machinery and materials used by chip manufacturers to fill the gaps between memory chip layers with epoxy resin.
Furthermore, investors have taken note of Samsung's disadvantage in the HBM competition. Samsung's stock price has declined by 7% year-to-date, while SK Hynix and Micron, during the same period, have reportedly risen by approximately 17% and 14% respectively.
