NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang, confirmed on Friday in Seoul that Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology have all been certified to supply HBM4 high-bandwidth memory chips for NVIDIA's next-generation AI platform, Vera Rubin.

Huang, speaking to media upon his arrival in South Korea for a visit, stated that all three suppliers have passed qualification and are in mass production, currently focused on meeting the supply requirements for the Vera Rubin platform. This marks the first official confirmation from NVIDIA that all three memory chip makers have simultaneously secured HBM4 supply qualifications. These companies dominate the global memory chip market and have been competing for NVIDIA's HBM supply share. SK Hynix held approximately a 62% market share in the HBM3E era. The concurrent certification of all three suggests the supply landscape for the HBM4 generation may be shifting.

Huang revealed this week during the Taipei Computex event that the Vera Rubin platform has entered full mass production, with complete systems scheduled for official shipment in the third quarter of this year. This AI system is built using NVIDIA's Vera CPU and Rubin GPU clusters, with each server equipped with terabytes of HBM4 high-bandwidth memory. HBM4 is the sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory product, offering a doubling of the interface width compared to the previous HBM3E generation and increasing data transfer speeds from approximately 1 TB/s to 2 TB/s.

Regarding progress from each company, Samsung Electronics initiated mass production and shipments of HBM4 as early as February this year. SK Hynix officially entered full mass production for HBM4 at the beginning of the year. Micron Technology announced HBM4 mass production in March, with its production ramp-up speed being twice as fast as during last year's HBM3E mass production.

Arm CEO Rene Haas noted this week that shortages in high-end memory are currently the most challenging production bottleneck in the AI supply chain. The simultaneous certification of these three major players is seen as a positive development for alleviating supply tightness.

Huang also mentioned that NVIDIA is establishing a new research and development center in South Korea and has begun hiring personnel to enhance coordination with its Korean partners on supply chain matters.