SK Hynix showcases cutting-edge CXL, AiM memory at OCP Summit

SK Hynix Inc., the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker after Samsung Electronics Co., said on Friday it showcased its next-generation memory semiconductor technologies at the OCP Global Summit 2023 in San Jose, California October 17-19.

The annual forum, hosted by the world’s largest data center tech community, the Open Compute Project (OCP), brings together industry experts to share ideas and showcase cutting-edge chip technologies and devices.

This year, SK and its San Jose-based NAND flash memory affiliate Solidigm set up a demonstration booth to show their advanced memory products, suitable for generative artificial intelligence (AI) devices.

At the event, SK said it presented a broad range of products, including HBM3, HBM3E, CXL and AiM.

HBM3E, the extended version of HBM3, or high bandwidth memory 3, is fifth-generation DRAM memory. HBM is high-value, high-performance memory that vertically interconnects multiple DRAM chips, dramatically increasing data processing speed compared with earlier DRAM products.

CXL, short for computer express link, is a next-generation interface that adds efficiency to accelerators, DRAM and storage devices used with central processing units (CPUs) in high-performance server systems.

AiM, or accelerator in memory, is the name of SK Hynix’s PIM product, a DRAM that helps process data like a CPU.

The company also unveiled some of the latest additions to its product portfolio such as DDR5 RDIMM, MCR DIMM, enterprise SDD and LPDDR CAMM devices.

SK said visitors to its booth showed keen interest in HBM3 installed on Nvidia Corp.’s H100, a high-performance graphics processing unit (GPU).

Demand for HBM is growing rapidly as it is used to power generative AI devices like ChatGPT, high-performance data centers and machine learning platforms.

POTENTIAL GAME-CHANGER

SK Hynix said it pins high hopes on its CXL products, emerging as a game-changer in the rapidly evolving semiconductor industry.

The company demonstrated three of its CXL products at the event, including a CXL-based computational memory solution (CMS) 2.0, which uses near-memory processing (NMP) architecture to address CPU memory bottlenecks and improve processing performance.

SK applied CMS 2.0 to SK Telecom Co.’s real-time foot traffic analysis service at the show to illustrate its data processing power equivalent to that of a server CPU.

The chipmaker collaborated with software provider MemVerge Inc. to demonstrate its CXL-based pooled memory solution, which significantly reduces idle memory usage and shortens the overhead time of data movement in AI and big data environments.

SK also showcased a prototype of AiMX, a generative AI accelerator card that combines GDDR6 chips to enhance AI performance, with its response time 10 times faster than a conventional GPU and using less power.

“As the world’s No. 1 AI memory solution provider, we will continue to tackle industry challenges and make technological breakthroughs in the AI era,” said an SK Hynix executive.

Write to Ye-Rin Choi at rambutan@hankyung.com

In-Soo Nam edited this article.