SK hynix expressed confidence in its High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM) manufacturing technology. The company emphasized that its proprietary HBM is considerably more robust than competitors' products, which will enable it to maintain leadership in next-generation semiconductor packaging.

Industry sources on June 9 reported that SK hynix presented this information at the “ECTC 2024” symposium held in Denver, U.S., on May 28.

SK hynix claimed that its HBM, manufactured with the company’s unique Mass Reflow-Molded Underfill (MR-MUF) technology, is 60% sturdier than products made using Thermal Compression-Non-Conductive Film (TC-NCF).

For this paper, SK hynix conducted tests by puncturing the top of the HBM-mounted DRAM with a sharp tool to induce scratches, and found that its chips had fewer scratches than those produced with TC-NCF. This result indicates that the HBM can withstand external physical impacts without affecting the yield during the heterogeneous integration packaging process involving the combination of HBM and compute units.

The industry views this paper as SK hynix's way of highlighting its superior HBM manufacturing technology over rivals like Samsung Electronics and Micron Technology. SK hynix, which is the leading supplier of HBM to major AI semiconductor companies like NVIDIA and is at the forefront of advanced semiconductor packaging with TSMC, anticipates that these results will appeal to its key customers.

SK hynix also showcased the development status of its next-generation packaging technology, labeled as “Vertical Fan-Out (VFO),” at ECTC. This technique involves stacking four LPDDR memories vertically on top of a compute unit without a semiconductor substrate, known as Fan-Out Wafer-Level Packaging (FOWLP).