Samsung today announced the market launch of Flashbolt, its third-generation High Bandwidth Memory 2E (HBM2E). Ready to deliver twice the capacity of the previous-generation 8GB HBM2 Aquabolt , the new Flashbolt sharply increases performance and power efficiency to significantly improve next-generation computing systems. The 16GB capacity is achieved by vertically stacking eight layers of 10nm-class (1y) 16-gigabit (Gb) DRAM dies on top of a buffer chip. This HBM2E package is then interconnected in a precise arrangement of more than 40,000 through silicon via (TSV) microbumps, with each 16Gb die containing over 5,600 of these microscopic holes.
Samsung’s new 16-gigabyte (GB) HBM2E provides a highly reliable data transfer speed of 3.2 gigabits per second (Gbps) by leveraging a proprietary optimized circuit design for signal transmission, while offering a memory bandwidth of 410GB/s per stack. Samsung’s HBM2E can also attain a transfer speed of 4.2Gbps, the maximum tested data rate to date, enabling up to a 538GB/s bandwidth per stack in certain future applications. This would represent a 1.75x enhancement over Aquabolt’s 307GB/s.
The new Samsung 16-gigabyte (GB) HBM2E is uniquely suited to maximize high performance computing (HPC) systems and help system manufacturers to advance their supercomputers, AI-driven data analytics and state-of-the-art graphics systems in a timely manner. Samsung expects to begin volume production during the first half of 2020.
