FMS 2025: Sandisk to Collaborate with SK hynix

Sandisk Corporation announced it has signed a landmark Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with SK hynix, Inc. to work together to establish the specification for High Bandwidth Flash – a new technology designed to deliver breakthrough memory capacity and performance for the next-gen of AI inferences.

Through this collaboration, the companies expect to standardize the specification, define technology requirements and explore the creation of a technology ecosystem for High Bandwidth Flash.

“By collaborating with SK hynix to define the High Bandwidth Flash specification, we are addressing the critical need for scalable memory in the AI industry,” said Alper Ilkbahar, EVP and CTO, and HBF technical advisory board member, Sandisk. “This collaboration accelerates innovation and will offer the industry new tools to handle the exponential data demands of tomorrow’s applications. Our work will help provide an effective solution to meet the world’s technology needs and exceeds expectations of our respective customers.”

“There is an ever-increasing need for solutions that address the challenges of next-generation computing,” said Dr. Hyun Ahn, President and chief development officer, SK hynix. “Through our work with Sandisk to standardize the High Bandwidth Flash specification, we are actively contributing to the commercialization of this innovative technology, which we believe is key to unlocking the full potential of AI and next-generation data workloads.”

As AI models grow larger and more complex, inference workloads demand both massive bandwidth and significantly greater memory capacity. Designed for AI inference workloads in large data centers, small enterprises and edge applications, HBF is targeted to offer comparable bandwidth to High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) while delivering up to 8-16x the capacity of HBM at a similar cost.

Enabled by Sandisk’s advanced BiCS technology and proprietary CBA wafer bonding and developed over the past year with input from AI industry players, The company’s HBF technology was awarded Best of Show, Most Innovative Technology at FMS: the Future of Memory and Storage 2025. Sandisk targets to deliver 1st samples of its HBF memory in the second half of calendar 2026 and expects samples of the first AI-inference devices with HBF to be available in early 2027.

The company recently announced the formation of a Technical Advisory Board to guide the development and strategy of its groundbreaking HBF memory technology. The board, consisting of industry experts and senior technical leaders from both within and outside of the firm, will provide strategic guidance, technical insight, market perspective, and shape a standards-driven ecosystem.