SanDisk, SK hynix release AI memory standard with Google, Tenstorrent

The standardization of High Bandwidth Flash represents a coordinated industry response to a specific technical challenge: AI inference systems increasingly need memory that is both fast and large, positioned physically close to processing cores. The body notes that this demand stems from the requirements of large language models and emerging AI workloads, which the specification framers saw as a defining characteristic of the inference era. By completing the specification six months after launching the effort in February 2026, the consortium demonstrated focused execution, and the participation of Google and Tenstorrent alongside the primary contributors SanDisk and SK hynix suggests broad validation across both memory manufacturers and compute-system designers.

The specification's scope—covering system interface, electrical standards, host interface design, packaging, and software guidance—is comprehensive enough to allow system designers to build HBF into their architectures with reduced risk and design cycle time. Notably, the body emphasizes that the standard enables HBF to coexist with existing high-bandwidth memory technologies rather than displacing them, offering designers architectural flexibility. According to SanDisk's CTO, this flexibility helps "improve token economics at scale," framing the technical advance as directly relevant to the operational efficiency of large language model deployment.