The Korean chip manufacturer has ordered AFM metrology equipment from UK’s Infinitesima for the in-line inspection of high-bandwidth memory packaging, an essential part of AI systems.
SK Hynix is by far the biggest producer of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), with an estimated market share of around 70 percent. The Korean company owes this position to an early focus on mass-producing stacks of DRAM memory, achieving early successes with HBM3 and HBM3E. Now, it’s preparing to scale up volume production of HBM4E, which contains stacks of sixteen DRAM memories, using hybrid bonding as one of the packaging technologies.
Hybrid bonding is one of the drivers of the market adoption of in-line atomic force microscopy (AFM). Probably, it’s even the biggest AFM metrology market considering the amount of memory needed to power the next generation of artificial intelligence systems. Key players SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron are even looking to stack twenty DRAMs or more in future HBM generations. Six or more of those stacks are needed in an AI system.
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