Report: Nvidia Won’t Receive Samsung HBM3E Supply This Year

It’s no secret that Samsung has had trouble getting its HBM3E memory to qualify for use by Nvidia. But a new report from Korea News, which comes via Wccftech, indicates that Samsung is acknowledging defeat for 2024 and looking for success for its high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in 2025.

“It is realistically impossible for Samsung Electronics to supply 8-layer and 12-layer HBM3E to Nvidia this year,” Samsung told Daily Korea. “The reason for the delay in supply is that we were unable to meet Nvidia’s requirements for chip performance.”

Samsung announced weak earnings in October and apologized to its customers, investors, and employees. Refreshingly, the company’s leaders assumed the blame for the “crisis” and projected confidence that they could turn things around. The takeaway from this week’s Daily Korea report, then, is that 2025 is when Samsung hopes to make that happen, and not before then. Given that the new year is just weeks away, that’s not surprising, but it’s interesting that Samsung seems to be keeping in touch with the press as it tackles the problem with its memory.

Also, Samsung’s troubles with its 3nm process led to rumors that the tech giant was looking to sell its foundry business. Samsung’s chairman strongly denied the rumors, saying that Samsung had no intention of selling its foundry and would instead grow the business. Samsung’s foundry business reportedly stood to lose more than $1 billion in 2024 and has lost some clients to TSMC.

Credit: SK Hynix

SK Hynix is also a major competitor to Samsung, particularly for HBM3E memory. The memory is valuable for major AI companies (thus, the interest from Nvidia), and SK Hynix has had success with its HBM3E. Meanwhile, SK Hynix has been hinting at an upcoming technology that could provide a massive improvement over existing HBM tech. Still, there’s not enough info available to get worked up just yet. The massive amounts of money being put into AI has everyone looking for a way to build must-have tech that will attract AI behemoths like Nvidia.

SK Hynix 2025 looks bright beyond HBM3E for Nvidia. It is competing with Samsung and others (Kioxia and Micron) in the race to build the highest-performing NAND chips and already passed 321 layers this year. Some see this is a race to 1000 layers, but in the end, any innovation that produces the highest-performing memory will take the day.

For now, we’ll have to wait for Samsung’s next moves to see if it can back on track and get a spot in Nvidia’s supply line in 2025.