Seoul, Oct 31
Samsung Electronics on Thursday hinted at the possibility of supplying its advanced high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips to the US AI giant Nvidia in the near future.
The South Korean tech giant has been struggling to have its HBM3E chips pass Nvidia's quality tests, while its local chip making rival SK hynix recently began mass-producing industry-leading 12-layer HBM3E chips, news agency reported.
"We are currently mass-producing both eight-layer and 12-layer HBM3E products," said Kim Jae-june, vice president for memory business at Samsung Electronics, during a conference call following the release of its third-quarter earnings report.
Kim noted that the company has achieved "meaningful progress" in meeting quality testing requirements for a "major customer," expected to be Nvidia, whose GPUs are essential for AI computing.
"We expect to expand sales in the fourth quarter," he added, addressing previous concerns that Samsung Electronics had fallen behind in supplying HBM products to Nvidia.
Samsung Electronics reported that its third-quarter HBM sales rose more than 70 per cent from the previous quarter, with the fifth-generation HBM3E chips expected to contribute 50 per cent of total HBM sales in the fourth quarter.