HBM4E is the successor to HBM4 (6th generation), which is currently in mass production. It is expected to be used in NVIDIA's next-generation AI accelerator, "Rubin Ultra," slated for release next year.

According to South Korean media citing SK hynix and fire authorities on the 12th, a fire broke out around 9:55 a.m. (local time) on the second floor of Building M15X, located within SK Hynix's Cheongju plant in Heungdeok District, Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province. After the fire broke out, employees from M15 and M15X were immediately evacuated outdoors. Reports indicate that the company's firefighting team extinguished the fire in its early stages. Cheongju issued a disaster alert, advising nearby residents to avoid the area and vehicles to take detours due to concerns over potential fluoride leaks. According to the latest news, the fire department stated that the investigation found no gas leakage. SK hynix stated that initial control has been completed, and the company is investigating the specific circumstances, adding that production equipment is operating normally. A fire also broke out at SK hynix's Cheongju Site 4 on the 1st of this month.

According to Korean media reports, Samsung Electronics is pushing ahead with the construction of an advanced semiconductor packaging (back-end process) plant in Gwangju, marking the company's first semiconductor production base in the Honam region (its current facilities are mainly concentrated in the Chungcheong region). This will be Samsung Electronics' first new packaging facility in 35 years since the establishment of its Onyang plant. The project is also expected to include front-end production lines for DRAM and NAND flash memory. The investment plan is reportedly scheduled for discussion on the 29th during a meeting chaired by President Lee Jae-myung, which will include heads of major corporate groups including Samsung.

According to Korean media reports citing industry sources, thanks to Samsung Electronics' advanced 2nm process technology and increased output of HBM chips, coupled with improved yield rates and large-volume orders, the foundry division is expected to turn a profit as early as the third quarter of this year. This moves up its profitability target from the original timeline of late this year or next year. After posting trillions of won in cumulative losses since 2022, the division may return to profitability for the first time in roughly four years.

With its eighth-generation TPU, Google breaks from the tradition of single-chip iteration by splitting training and inference into two distinct chips: the TPU 8t designed for large-scale training, and the TPU 8i optimized for inference and AI agents. This enables precise matching of the different demands of AI scenarios.

Chey reiterated that the memory supply bottlenecks triggered by the widespread adoption of AI are expected to persist until 2030. He pointed out that not only is global capital pouring into AI data center construction, but Nvidia's upcoming AI PC architecture will also create rigid demand for high-capacity memory, providing long-term growth momentum for the memory market.

After roughly 18 months of development, Crescent Island is expected to begin customer sampling later this year. Intel is also exploring manufacturing options that could leverage its own fabs, potentially enhancing cost competitiveness through greater vertical integration.

Samsung Electronics announced that it has begun shipping the industry’s first 12-layer HBM4E samples to major global customers, further strengthening its leadership in the next-generation HBM market.

Alper Ilkbahar, CTO and EVP of Sandisk, said in a recent media interview that the global AI race is becoming increasingly memory-centric rather than compute-centric, which could exacerbate an unprecedented tight supply of memory chips. He also provided an update on HBF, revealing that the wafer is currently being designed, samples of the HBF chip will be available by the end of this year, and the complete product with a controller is expected to launch next year.

Driven by supply-demand mismatches, contract prices for DRAM and NAND rose significantly quarter-on-quarter, and the bargaining power of original manufacturers improved markedly. The tight-supply-driven price increase pattern remained highly sustainable. According to CFM analysis, the global DRAM/NAND Flash market size reached US$137.14 billion in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 81.6% quarter-on-quarter and 245% year-on-year, setting a new all-time quarterly high.

According to the latest reports from South Korean media, labor negotiations between Samsung Electronics and the union broke down again today (May 20). The Samsung Electronics union has officially announced that it will proceed with the general strike as planned tomorrow (May 21). Management has explicitly rejected the strike proposal. Calls from Samsung shareholders for an emergency arbitration process are growing increasingly urgent.

According to reports that South Korean media citing internal sources, Samsung Electronics' DS division has recently increased the yield of its 10nm-class fifth-generation (1b) DRAM, used in the core chips of HBM3E, to 92% (based on cold test). In addition, the yield of sixth-generation (1c) DRAM, to be installed in HBM4, has been raised to over 75%.

According to a South Korean media report, Samsung Electronics activated an emergency management system for its semiconductor production lines one week before a general strike.

According to ZDNet, citing industry sources, SK hynix is collaborating with Intel on the research and development of 2.5D packaging technology. It is reported that SK Hynix is considering adopting Intel's 2.5D packaging technology, known as “Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge” (EMIB), and is currently conducting tests to combine HBM and system semiconductors with EMIB-embedded substrates supplied by Intel.

Chung-Won Shu, Chairman of Transcend, stated that artificial intelligence has triggered a comprehensive boom in Taiwan's hardware industry. In particular, the memory industry has entered a super cycle. He expects that DRAM and NAND Flash will face shortages not only this year but definitely next year, and could still remain in short supply as late as 2028. He predicts that prices will continue to rise, though whether end applications can absorb the sustained price increases requires close monitoring.