Stock prices of major semiconductor foundry companies such as TSMC and Samsung took a major beating on Monday. TSMC, Taiwan's premier foundry, sees its share prices drop by 7.1%, its lowest since Q1 2021. Samsung Electronics dropped by as much as 3.9%, and SK Hynix by 3.5%. Bloomberg reports that the selloffs in Asian markets may have been triggered by traders returning on Monday from a week's holiday reacting to fresh curbs on semiconductor sales to China by the Biden administration. The publication also remarks that global tech stocks have had their worst month since the October 2008.

"The latest U.S. move would prompt China to move faster in fostering the domestic chip industry," said Omdia analyst Akira Minamikawa. "Japanese firms should continue trading with Chinese firms with goods not restricted because the business is business. But they should be ready for a future--maybe in a decade or two--when they lose all the Chinese customers as a result of the current tension dialing up speed of the Chinese efforts."

SK Hynix at the 2022 Intel InnovatiON event, showed off some unconventional server memory capacities. The company presented DDR5 RDIMMs in 48 GB and 96 GB densities, besides the usual 32 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB ones. These are being offered in data-rates of DDR5-5600 and DDR5-6400, which indicates that DDR5-5600 (JEDEC-standard) could be the standard memory speed supported by Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" processors, with some (or all) models also supporting DDR5-6400. These are not XMP or overclocking SPDs, but JEDEC-standard ones that the processors can automatically train to. The flagship product among SK Hynix's booth would have to be a mammoth 256 GB DDR5-5600 RDIMM, which should enable servers with up to 4 TB of memory per socket (@2 RDIMMs per channel).

As reported by BusinessKorea, Apple, one of the largest companies in the world, will source its 3D NAND from Chinese memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC). Known for supplying 3D NAND to Chinese SSD makers, YTMC's reported contract with Apple will fuel the upcoming iPhone 14 SKU manufacturing. Whether or not this partnership will expand to other products, it is essential to have as many storage sources as possible, as Apple sells millions of devices per year. YTMC is on track to deliver 3D NAND flash with the latest Xstacking 3.0 six-plane architecture that provides triple-level cell storage with I/O speeds of 2400 MT/s.

YTMC has joined the list of 3D NAND flash vendors that Apple works with, including SK Hynix, Samsung, Kioxia, and possibly others. This partnership also highlights that the Chinese memory output is sufficient and significant enough to break into more markets worldwide, not remaining exclusive to domestic use.

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it will build the M15X (eXtension), a new fabrication plant, in Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do, in preparation for future growth. The company will start construction of the M15 extension on the site it secured previously earlier than initially planned, considering various market situations. The new plant will be built from October on the 60,000㎡ land located in the Cheongju Technopolis industrial complex and completed early 2025. A total of 15 trillion won will be injected over the next five years to build the fab and set up production facilities. The fab will be a two-story building equivalent to a combination of M11 and M12 in size.

As for the next M17 fab, the company will decide construction plan after reviewing overall business environment including changes in the semiconductor business cycle. "Looking back on the past 10 years, SK hynix could grow into a global company as it boldly carried out investment during crisis," said Vice Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Park Jung-ho. "As we look to prepare for the next 10 years now, I believe starting the M15X will be a first step to lay foundation for a solid future growth."

According to TrendForce research, material supply improvement and spiking demand for enterprise SSDs from North American hyperscale data center and enterprise clients in 2Q22 coupled with the Kioxia contamination incident in 1Q22 prompted customers to ramp up procurement to avoid future supply shortages. Manufacturers also give priority to meeting the needs of server customers due to the high pricing of enterprise SSD. In the second quarter, overall revenue of the enterprise SSD market increased by 31.3% to US$7.32 billion.

As the market leader, Samsung has grown its enterprise SSD revenue to US$3.26 billion with the recovery of enterprise SSD procurement. Especially in the second quarter, when orders for other consumer products continued to decline, enterprise SSD became the company's outlet for reducing production capacity. At present, Samsung has been continuously investing in the development of next-generation transmission specification products such as the CXL 2.0 product released at the Flash Summit in early August, in order to maintain a leading position in the market.

SK hynix Inc. announced today that it has developed the industry's highest 238-layer NAND Flash product. The company has recently shipped samples of the 238-layer 512Gb triple level cell (TLC) 4D NAND product to customers with a plan to start mass production in the first half of 2023. "The latest achievement follows development of the 176-layer NAND product in December 2020," the company stated. "It is notable that the latest 238-layer product is most layered and smallest in area at the same time."

The company unveiled development of the latest product at the Flash Memory Summit 2022 in Santa Clara. "SK hynix secured global top-tier competitiveness in perspective of cost, performance and quality by introducing the 238-layer product based on its 4D NAND technologies," said Jungdal Choi, Head of NAND Development at SK hynix in his keynote speech during the event. "We will continue innovations to find breakthroughs in technological challenges."

SK hynix has developed its first DDR5 DRAM-based CXL (Compute Express Link) memory samples and strengthened its presence in next-generation memory solutions market. The form factor of the sample is EDSFF (Enterprise & Data Center Standard Form Factor) E3.S and it supports PCIe 5.0 x8 Lane, uses DDR5 standard DRAM and is equipped with CXL controllers. CXL, which is based on PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), is a new standardized interface that helps increase the efficiency of utilizing CPUs, GPUs, accelerators, and memory. SK hynix has participated in the CXL consortium from an early stage, and is looking to secure CXL memory market leadership.

The essential point of the CXL memory market is expandability. The CXL memory allows for flexible memory expansion compared to current server market, where the memory capacity and performance are fixed once the server platform is adopted. CXL also has high growth potential as it is an interface spotlighted for high performance computing systems such as AI and big data related applications.

SK hynix Inc. reported today revenues of 13.81 trillion won, operating profit of 4.19 trillion won (with operating margin of 30%), and net income of 2.88 trillion (with net income margin 21%) in the second quarter of 2022. SK hynix reported 12.16 trillion won in revenues, 2.86 trillion won in operating profit, and net income 1.98 trillion won in the first quarter of 2022 The company achieved record high quarterly sales along with operating profits over 4 trillion won.

This is the first time that SK hynix has posted revenues over 13 trillion won in a single quarter. Previously, the company's highest quarterly revenues were 12.38 trillion won, recorded in the fourth quarter of 2021. "Although DRAM product prices fell during the second quarter, revenues increased as NAND prices rose and overall sales volume increased," the company said. "Continued rise of the US dollar and the addition of Solidigm's sales also worked as positive factors for the quarterly revenue."

SK hynix announced that it began mass production of HBM3, the world's best-performing DRAM. The announcement comes just seven months after the company became the first in the industry to develop HBM3 in October, and is expected to solidify the company's leadership in the premium DRAM market. With accelerating advancements in cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data, major global tech companies are seeking ways to quickly process rapidly increasing volumes of data. HBM, with significant competitiveness in data processing speed and performance compared with traditional DRAM, is expected to draw broad industry attention and see rising adoption.

NVIDIA has recently completed its performance evaluation of SK hynix's HBM3 samples. SK hynix will provide HBM3 for NVIDIA systems expected to ship starting in the third quarter of this year. SK hynix will expand HBM3 volume in the first half in accordance with NVIDIA's schedule. The highly anticipated NVIDIA H100 is the world's largest and most powerful accelerator. SK hynix's HBM3 is expected to enhance accelerated computing performance with up to 819 GB/s of memory bandwidth, equivalent to the transmission of 163 FHD (Full-HD) movies (5 GB standard) every second.

SK hynix Inc. today announced availability of the "Platinum P41" PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD that distills technical excellence driven by unmatched speeds and reliability. The Platinum series represents the company's flagship retail lineup geared towards gamers and content creators looking to turbo-boost PC performance. Launched as SK hynix's first PCIe 4.0 SSD built with advanced 176-layer NAND flash memory, the Platinum P41 is now available for purchase on Amazon in the U.S. in 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB capacity options.

Designed to excel among PCIe 4.0 SSDs, the Platinum P41 offers sequential read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 6,500 MB/s with an industry-leading endurance rating of up to 1,200 TBW. The Platinum P41 also provides further assurance of reliability with an SK hynix in-house "Aries" controller, which in itself contributes to the superior read/write speeds.

Today SK hynix and Solidigm jointly introduced their first collaborative product, a new enterprise solid-state drive (eSSD), P5530. This limited release product highlights the emerging partnership between SK hynix and Solidigm, which formed three months ago when SK hynix acquired Intel's NAND and SSD business. The P5530 combines SK hynix's 128-layer 4D NAND flash with Solidigm's SSD controller and firmware supporting a PCIe Gen 4 interface. The product is offered in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB capacity options. SK hynix and Solidigm worked together to optimize performance with specific data center use cases and targeted deployments in mind.

Since the launch of Solidigm, the companies have partnered to forge a forward-moving strategy and co-develop products while reinforcing common values across the companies. Through the ongoing partnership and collaboration with Solidigm, SK hynix expects to enhance its NAND flash business competitiveness to the same extent as its DRAM business.

"With in-time demonstration of the collaborative product based on the combined competence of SK hynix and Solidigm, we aim to not only enhance our NAND flash business competitiveness but also speed up our "Inside America" strategy," said Kevin (Jongwon) Noh, President and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at SK hynix. "SK hynix and Solidigm will continue to partner in order to optimize both companies' operations to create greater synergies."

SK hynix, was the only company that presented its HBM3, a high-end product known as the fastest DRAM in existence with the biggest capacity, at NVIDIA GTC (GPU Technology Conference) 2022, which took place on March 21~24. Known as the world's best-performing DRAM, HBM3 is the fourth generation of the HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) technology. SK hynix's HBM3 uses over 8,000 TSVs per stack (i.e. over 100,000 TSVs in a 12-Hi stack) and can feature up to 12-Hi stack, which is an upgrade from the previous HBM2E's 8-Hi stack. When fully stacked, it can offer up to 24 GB of capacity. With a 16-channel architecture, it runs at 6.4 Gbps, which is double that of HBM2E and which is the fastest in the world, expecting to further accelerate our digital life.

For instance, HBM has become a prerequisite for the Levels 4 and 5 of driving automation when it comes to autonomous vehicles, a topic that has garnered a great deal of attention nowadays. Also, HBM3 is expected to play an even bigger role along with the growth of High Performance Computing (HPC), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) markets fueled by the acceleration of digital transformation.

Rather surprisingly, SK Hynix has said that it's interested in being part of a consortium to purchase Arm, during its annual shareholders meeting. Although several companies have voiced their interest in Arm, such as Qualcomm and even Intel, SK Hynix hasn't even been on the radar until now. However, the interesting part here is the bit about a consortium and Park Jung-ho, vice chairman and CEO of SK Hynix is quoted saying "I don't believe Arm is a company that could be bought by one company," by the Yonhap News Agency.

Although SK Hynix has only recently started working on the idea of purchasing Arm, most likely due to NVIDIA's deal to purchase Arm from SoftBank falling through, it looks like SK Hynix have a very different plan to that of NVIDIA. Park continued "It doesn't have to be buying a majority of its shares to be able to control the company," suggesting that even if SoftBank was to list Arm on the stock market as a standalone company, SK Hynix could try to take control of a majority of its shares. However, the mention of the consortium is something other industry players have proposed and it seems like the most sensible way to move forward, without causing negative effects for the Arm licensees in the long term.

SK hynix announced on February 16 that it has developed PIM (processing-in-memory), a next-generation memory chip with computing capabilities. It has been generally accepted that memory chips store data and CPU or GPU, like human brain, process data. SK hynix, following its challenge to such notion and efforts to pursue innovation in the next-generation smart memory, has found a breakthrough solution with the development of the latest technology.

SK hynix plans to showcase its PIM development at the world's most prestigious semiconductor conference, 2022 ISSCC, in San Francisco at the end of this month. The company expects continued efforts for innovation of this technology to bring the memory-centric computing, in which semiconductor memory plays a central role, a step closer to the reality in devices such as smartphones.

SK hynix today announced financial results for its fiscal year 2021 ended on December 31, 2021. The consolidated revenue of fiscal year 2021 was 42.998 trillion won, while the operating profit amounted to 12.410 trillion won and the net income 9.616 trillion won. Operating margin for the year was 29% and net margin was 22%. SK hynix achieved record high annual revenue since its foundation. This surpasses the revenue in 2018 when the semiconductor market was in its biggest boom.

Despite uncertain market conditions such as supply chain disruptions, demand for contactless IT technology has increased. Based on its technology and quality competitiveness, SK hynix managed to supply its products proactively, achieving record-breaking annual sales. For DRAM, SK hynix focused on securing profitability by flexibly responding to demands in PC and server applications in DRAM business. Furthermore, by developing the industry's first DDR5 and HBM3 DRAM, SK hynix has secured leading quality competitiveness in high value-added next-gen products.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in the development of standards for the microelectronics industry, today announced the publication of the next version of its High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) DRAM standard: JESD238 HBM3, available for download from the JEDEC website. HBM3 is an innovative approach to raising the data processing rate used in applications where higher bandwidth, lower power consumption and capacity per area are essential to a solution's market success, including graphics processing and high-performance computing and servers.

At CES 2022, SK Telecom, SK Square and SK hynix announced the launch of the 'SK ICT Alliance' to jointly develop and invest in ICT convergence technologies, and create global market opportunities. The alliance comes as SK hynix celebrates the tenth year since joining the SK Group and SK Square successfully spun off from SK Telecom, marking the beginning of a new era of synergies between semiconductor, telecommunication and investment.

With the aim to secure global competitiveness in diverse ICT areas such as semiconductors, 5G and AI, the three companies plan to carry out joint business activities in the global market by leveraging SK Square's innovative investment, SK Telecom's AI and 5G technologies and SK hynix's future semiconductor technologies. From January 2022, the three companies will operate 'Synergy Council' chaired by Vice Chairman Park Jung-ho, and joined by Ryu Young-sang, CEO of SK Telecom, and Lee Seok-Hee, CEO of SK hynix. The Synergy Council will be the highest decision making body, where the executives discuss R&D cooperation and joint investments in semiconductor and ICT areas, and promote global market expansion.

SK hynix today unveiled the Platinum P41, the fastest M.2 NVMe SSD under the NAND flash and DRAM manufacturer's own marquee. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, the drive is targeted at the DIY PC enthusiast segment, and is the company's first client-segment drive to take advantage of the PCI-Express 4.0 x4 host interface. The drive combines an in-house controller design by the company, codenamed "Aries," with the company's latest 176-layer 3D NAND flash, and a DDR4 DRAM cache.

The SK hynix Platinum P41 comes in three variants based on capacity—500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB. All three feature a compact design. The company didn't release variant-specific performance numbers, but made broad performance claims for the series. It offers sequential reads of up to 7,000 MB/s, with up to 6,500 MB/s sequential writes, up to 1.4 million IOPS 4K random reads; and up to 1.3 million IOPS 4K random writes. The endurance claims for the 500 GB variant are 500 TBW, for the 1 TB are 750 TBW, and for the 2 TB variant are 1,200 TBW. The drives are backed by 5-year warranties. The company will release pricing and availability later into Q1 2022 (before April).

Update Jan 4th: Additional technical details on the 176-layer NAND flash can be found here and here.

Hynix also confirmed to us that the Platinum P41 uses Hynix components exclusively: "The P41 uses TLC, SK hynix Aries controller, SK hynix NAND & DRAM." This also clarifies that the drive is TLC, so there's no chance for stealth component changes to QLC like on some other vendors.

SK hynix today announced that it has completed the first phase of the transaction to acquire Intel's NAND and solid-state drive (SSD) business. Following the recent merger clearance from China's State Administration for Market Regulation on Dec. 22, SK hynix closed the first phase of the transaction by acquiring Intel's SSD business and the Dalian NAND flash manufacturing facility in China. In exchange, SK hynix will pay US $7 billion in consideration.

In the second phase of the transaction, SK hynix will acquire from Intel the remaining assets in relation to its NAND business, including IP related to the manufacture and design of NAND flash wafers, R&D employees for NAND flash wafers, the Dalian facility workforce, and the other associated tangible / intangible assets. Closing of the second phase is expected to occur in or after March 2025 with the remaining payment of US $2 billion, which will complete the entire deal.

SK hynix Inc. today announced that it has received merger clearance from the Chinese antitrust authority, State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) for its acquisition of Intel NAND and SSD business. With SAMR's merger clearance SK hynix has received all required merger clearances in eight jurisdictions from the relevant competition authorities.

SK hynix will continue to prepare to close the transaction including achieving all of the closing conditions. The consideration for the 1st Closing is USD 7 billion. Upon the 1st Closing, SK hynix will acquire the Intel SSD business (including SSD-associated IP and employees) and Dalian facility. SK hynix sincerely welcomes and appreciates SAMR's merger clearance for the deal. SK hynix will enhance its competitiveness of NAND Flash and SSD business by continuing the remaining post-merger integration process.

SK hynix today announced that it has shipped samples of 24 Gigabit (Gb) DDR5* DRAM with the industry's largest density for a single DRAM chip. The announcement of SK hynix releasing the industry's largest density DDR5 chip comes in just 14 months after the Company became the first to release DDR5 DRAM in October 2020, further solidifying the chipmaker's technological leadership in DDR5.

The new 24 Gb DDR5 was produced with the cutting-edge 1 anm technology that utilizes EUV process. It has a density of 24Gb per chip, which is up from the existing density of 16 Gb in 1 ynm DDR5, with improved production efficiency and increased speed by up to 33%. In addition, SK hynix managed to reduce the product's power consumption by *25% compared to existing products while lowering energy use in manufacturing through enhanced production efficiency. SK hynix expects the product to bring about reduction in carbon emissions as well, which is meaningful in the context of ESG management.

The growth of the NAND Flash market in 3Q21 was primarily driven by strong demand from the data center and smartphone industries, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. More specifically, NAND Flash suppliers' hyperscaler and enterprise clients kept up their procurement activities that began in 2Q21 in order to deploy products based on new processor platforms. Major smartphone brands, on the other hand, likewise expanded their NAND Flash procurement activities during the quarter as they prepared to release their new flagship models. As such, clients in both server and smartphone industries made significant contributions to the revenue growth of the NAND Flash industry for 3Q21. At the same time, however, suppliers also warned that orders from PC OEMs began showing signs of decline. On the whole, the industry's quarterly total NAND Flash bit shipment increased by nearly 11% QoQ for 3Q21, and the overall NAND Flash ASP rose by nearly 4% QoQ for the same quarter. Thanks to rising prices and expanding shipments, the quarterly total NAND Flash revenue increased by 15% QoQ to a new record high of US$18.8 billion in 3Q21.

As the global vaccination rate rose, and border restrictions in Europe and North America eased, social activities also began to enter a period of recovery, with the consumer electronics market seemingly ready for the arrival of the traditional peak season in 2H21, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. At the same time, however, the global supply chain was affected by delays in maritime transport, skyrocketing shipping costs, and component shortages, in addition to already-prohibitive price hikes for certain components in 1H21. Given the parallel rise in both material and manufacturing costs, the market for end products has not undergone the expected cyclical upturn in 2H21. Even so, the overall demand for and shipment of smartphones, notebook computers, and monitors experienced QoQ increases in 3Q21, thereby driving up businesses for major OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test) companies. For 3Q21, the revenues of the top 10 OSAT companies reached US$8.89 billion, a 31.6% YoY increase.

The 3DMark Port Royal single card benchmark has a new record of 20,014 set by South Korean overclocker biso biso for Team EVGA. The overclocker used an Intel Core i9-12900K running at 5.4 GHz on an EVGA Z690 Dark Kingpin motherboard paired with the EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 Kingpin overclocked to 2,895 MHz. The system also featured 16 GB of DDR5 memory running at 6000 MHz from SK Hynix along with liquid nitrogen for cooling and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Extreme thermal paste on the CPU and GPU. This new record beats the previous record of 19,600 also from biso biso which featured the Core i9-10900K and RTX 3090 Kingpin.

EVGAArmed with the latest hardware, including an EVGA Z690 DARK K|NGP|N motherboard, and an EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 K|NGP|N running at a blistering 2,895 MHz GPU clock, extreme overclocker "biso biso" set a new single-GPU standard for 3DMark Port Royal with a score of 20,014! This marks the first ever 3DMark Port Royal (single card) score over 20,000 and a testiment to the capabilities of the highest performing EVGA products.

SK hynix announced that it has received an ISO 26262: 2018 FSM (Functional Safety Management) certification, the international standard for functional safety in automotive semiconductors. The global automotive functional safety certification institute, TUV Nord, conducted the assessment. Both companies commemorated the distinction by hosting an online ceremony. In attendance at the ceremony were Daeyong Shim, Head of Automotive Business, and Junho Song, Head of Quality System, from SK hynix and Bianca Pfuff, Profit Center Manager Functional Safety and Deputy Head of Certification Body SEECERT, and Josef Neumann, Senior Project Manager Functional Safety, from TUV Nord.

The ISO 26262 is the international standard for automobile functional safety established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 2011 to prevent accidents caused by automotive electrical and electronic systems failures. This certification awarded to SK hynix, ISO 26262: 2018, is the latest version with additional requirements for automotive semiconductors. In the automotive industry, safety, quality, and reliability are paramount. Therefore, it is becoming essential that producers of car electronic device related to safety meet ISO 26262 standards.