How to Spot Samsung Doubling HBM4 Output: Watch the Glass

Samsung Electronics is preparing to more than double next year's production of its HBM4 memory family — sixth-generation HBM4 and seventh-generation HBM4E. The clue comes from an unexpected place: a sharp rise in the company's appetite for so-called glass carriers.

The giveaway

A glass carrier is a support temporarily attached to the underside of a DRAM wafer to keep it from bending or cracking while it is ground thin and drilled. For HBM this matters a great deal: many memory dies must be stacked within a limited thickness, so as stack counts climb, the technology for thinning wafers and controlling warpage becomes ever more important.

According to semiconductor industry sources on the 20^th, Samsung will lift the volume of glass carriers it sends out for cleaning from 20,000 sheets a month this year to 50,000 next year. As recently as last year the figure was just 10,000 sheets: it doubled this year, and is now set to rise 2.5-fold.

Analysts note the caveats — carriers are reused after cleaning, and consumption varies with loading method and yield. Even so, a 2.5-fold jump in related volume makes it highly likely that HBM4 and HBM4E output will grow at least twofold from this year. These products center on stacks of 12 layers and higher.

Where Samsung stands

In February the company began mass-production shipments of HBM4 built on 10-nanometer-class sixth-generation (1c) DRAM with a base die made on a 4-nanometer process. In May it handed 12-layer HBM4E samples to customers, Nvidia among them.

Samsung's overall HBM production scale is expected to grow nearly 40% — from roughly 180,000 wafers a month this year to about 250,000 next year, measured by average monthly wafer input. Within that, the HBM4 family's share of shipments should climb from around 40% to about 80% as HBM4E ramps up. As one industry official put it, in expanding output Samsung is placing the high-value HBM4 at the center.

Source: Hacker News