Samsung Electronics ships HBM4E chip samples to customers, marking industry's first shipment of 12-layer high-bandwidth memory

Samsung started shipping samples of its 12-layer HBM4E chip on Friday. The company said this represents the industry's first shipment of such products, and the chip delivers more than 20% increase in speed performance over its previous-generation HBM4 products.

The HBM4E uses Samsung's latest 1c DRAM process technology (sixth-generation 10-nanometer-class DRAM) alongside Samsung's 4-nanometer foundry logic base die. Samsung had announced in April that it planned to ship the first HBM4E sample in the second quarter.

Samsung's customers include major AI players such as AMD, Nvidia and Google. The shipment comes three months after Samsung began shipping HBM4 chips to customers in February, as demand surges for advanced memory chips used in AI servers and processors.