Micron joins HBM4 race with 36GB 12-high stack, eyes AI and data center dominance

Race to power the next generation of AI

By shipping samples of the HMB4 to the key customers, Micron has joined SK hynix in the HBM4 race. In March this year, SK hynix shipped the 12-Layer HBM4 samples to customers. SK hynix’s HBM4 has implemented bandwidth capable of processing more than 2TB of data per second, processing data equivalent to more than 400 full-HD movies (5GB each) in a second, said the company.

“HBM competitive landscape, SK hynix has already sampled and secured approval of HBM4 12-high stack memory early Q1’2025 to NVIDIA for its next generation Rubin product line and plans to mass produce HBM4 in 2H 2025,” said Danish Faruqui, CEO, Fab Economics.

“Closely following, Micron is pending Nvidia’s tests for its latest HBM4 samples, and Micron plans to mass produce HBM4 in 1H 2026. On the other hand, the last contender, Samsung is struggling with Yield Ramp on HBM4 Technology Development stage, and so has to delay the customer samples milestones to Nvidia and other players while it earlier shared an end of 2025 milestone for mass producing HBM4.”

Faruqui noted another key differentiator among SK hynix, Micron, and Samsung: the base die that anchors the 12-high DRAM stack. For the first time, both SK hynix and Samsung have introduced a logic-enabled base die on 3nm and 4nm process technology to enable HBM4 product for efficient and faster product performance via base logic-driven memory management.

Both Samsung and SK hynix rely on TSMC for the production of their logic-enabled base die. However, it remains unclear whether Micron is using a logic base die, as the company lacks in-house capability to fabricate at 3nm.