Visitors tour exhibition booths at the 2025 Semiconductor Exhibition (SEDEX) held at COEX in Seoul’s Gangnam District. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 22 (Korea Bizwire) – In a glass-lit exhibition hall in southern Seoul, the quiet hum of competition filled the air. Two of South Korea’s tech titans—Samsung Electronics and SK hynix—unveiled their newest weapons in the global race to power artificial intelligence: the sixth generation of high bandwidth memory chips, or HBM4.
The debut took place at the 2025 Semiconductor Exhibition, or SEDEX, a three-day showcase that has become a ritual battleground for the world’s leading chipmakers. Both companies, long familiar with each other’s shadows, displayed their HBM4 prototypes not just as products, but as declarations: South Korea intends to stay at the center of the AI revolution.
At SK hynix’s booth during the 2025 Semiconductor Exhibition (SEDEX) held at COEX in Seoul’s Gangnam District, the company’s sixth-generation high bandwidth memory chip, the HBM4, was on display. (Yonhap)
HBM, the ultrafast memory that feeds data into Nvidia’s powerful graphics processing units, has quietly become the backbone of generative AI systems. The fifth-generation HBM3E still dominates the market, but next year’s HBM4 is expected to redefine performance standards as Nvidia integrates it into its upcoming “Rubin” AI accelerator.
SK hynix, the current leader of the HBM3E era, has already finished developing its HBM4 and is in talks with Nvidia for large-scale supply. The company’s close partnership with Nvidia and TSMC has made it a quiet giant of the AI economy—a company that rarely makes headlines but powers much of what the world now calls innovation.
SK hynix Inc. showcases its actual HBM4 chip at the 2025 Semiconductor Exhibition (SEDEX) in Seoul on Oct. 22, 2025. (Yonhap)
Samsung Electronics, by contrast, is on the comeback trail. After conceding ground in the HBM3E cycle, the world’s largest memory maker is betting big on HBM4 to restore its dominance. Its semiconductor chief, Jun Young-hyun, told shareholders in March that Samsung would not repeat its earlier missteps. The company, he promised, would hit every milestone on time.
Analysts say the stakes are existential. HBM is no longer just a memory chip; it is the blood that keeps AI models alive. Counterpoint Research estimates that SK hynix controlled 62 percent of global HBM shipments in the second quarter, compared with Samsung’s 17 percent and Micron’s 21 percent.
The numbers tell a familiar story of rivalry and resilience. But in the broader arc of history, what’s unfolding is more than a business contest. It’s a glimpse into how South Korea—an economy built on memory—seeks to reinvent itself as the brain of the AI age.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
