SK Hynix has been promoting the production of the seventh generation graphics memory (GDDR7) based on the 10-nanometer sixth-generation (1c) DRAM. It will start mass production at the M16 factory in Lichuan, South Korea as early as the end of this year, and will fully expand supply from next year. Industry expects that Tesla and NVIDIA will be the first customers.
According to people familiar with the matter, SK Hynix is introducing the 1c process to GDDR7, planning to cooperate with the launch process of the new generation of products of major customers. The company just mass-produced 16Gb GDDR7 based on 1b DRAM last year, and now it has moved to a more advanced process in less than a year, showing its aggressive layout in the graphics memory market. Samsung Electronics, which currently occupies a leading position in the GDDR7 market, still uses 1b nanometers as its main product, highlighting the leading image of SK Hynix.
Industry analysis, SK Hynix's expansion of GDDR7 investment is related to the cost of HBM4. As the production of "base die" commissioned Taiwan Electric's OEM, its price is about five to six times higher than self-production, resulting in the total cost expected to increase by about 30% when HBM3E transitions to HBM4. Against this background, GDDR7 is expected to become an important strategy for SK Hynix to balance product combination and disperse cost pressure. With the demands of AI and driver applications for mobile display cards and high-performance computing, the competition in the graphics DRAM market will inevitably become more intense.
SK하이닉스, ‘1c 나노’ GDDR7 생산…테슬라·엔비디아 공급 예상