Too many HBMs too defective: NVIDIA only takes tested chips from suppliers 1 comment
Image: Techwing
HBM was meanwhile and still is the language on the scale of Nvidia’s AI chips. New freight rules are expected to apply which provide stricter controls. As a result, all chips must now be tested more closely before installation. It’s always surprising.
ELE’s actual knowledge from South Korea’s report is that NVIDIA and the implementation partners apparently always installed unpainted HBM memory chips, the entire complete package was logically affected in the event of an error. And the full package is called GB200 today, it is in demand and valuable.
Unpaid chips installed are completely normal in many areas of the industry. Because with bar goods and not absolute premium solutions, errors occur very rarely, testing everything would be tested significantly and of course incur costs. However, it is a little different for heavily bred products. If a small component is defective, the entire yield can ultimately reduce the entire yield.
Intel had already introduced this rule a few years ago, but instead focused on multi-chip solutions, for example processors with multiple chip tiles/slots. At that time, the company had already stated that small errors would otherwise have a significant impact if everything is not tested in advance – the yield will finally drop sharply due to the various error sources.
Advanced Packaging for Innovation 2023 (image: Intel)
HBM in particular has been part of the problem in recent years. They were raised too high too high, even Nvidia had to correct several times, always left air when it was timed and did not address the full memory expansion. The new chips with 12 and 16 chip layers have an even higher potential for errors. Nvidia now presents that each of these chips is tested in advance.
This opens up new sales markets for suppliers. First and Genesis in South Korea were able to increase their sales in this direction by 80% last year, because another company Techwing, also in South Korea, is also called. The most important customer: SK Hynix, which in turn are market leaders in HBM products.
Cube Prober (Image: Techwing) Topics: HBM graphics cards Nvidia Storage Technologies Source: L’ELEC
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