Samsung Electronics unveils new memory strategy tailored to larger AI models and inference workloads, with a focus on speed, scalability and persistence

[Financial News] Samsung Electronics has unveiled a new memory strategy focused on speed, scalability and persistence at a global information technology (IT) infrastructure event held in Silicon Valley, California.
Shim Ho-jun, vice president on the AE Team in the Memory Business of Samsung Electronics’ DS Division, presented the strategy on the 12th (local time) at the OCP (Open Compute Project) Global Summit at the San Jose Convention Center in California.
Shim said the strategies had become important as AI models grow larger and the volume of data that must be processed during inference, along with the capacity of KV caches (temporarily stored key-value pairs), surges. As a result, capacity expansion and data storage technologies are emerging as priorities beyond memory bandwidth, he explained.
On speed, Samsung Electronics is preparing technologies including next-generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) 5, custom HBM, zHBM, which stacks memory on top of compute chips, and Processing-in-Memory (PIM), which performs simple computations within memory.
To improve data management efficiency and expand memory capacity, Samsung plans to use the alternative interconnect technology Compute Express Link (CXL), which efficiently connects AI accelerators responsible for computation with memory, as well as technologies based on CMM-D (CXL Memory Module-DRAM), a memory module that uses CXL.
Finally, to ensure data persistence, Samsung aims to maximize the storage performance and capacity for large-scale AI data through the latest storage technologies, including next-generation enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs).
At the event’s exhibition area, Samsung Electronics will display products central to the three strategies, including a mockup of HBM5 and wafers.
Shim said the company was expanding collaboration with global customers and partners on co-design and technical validation from the early stages of development as it pursues these strategies.
Samsung Electronics also plans to demonstrate a CXL-based memory expansion solution jointly with AMD at the event, presenting a way to address the memory capacity limits of existing systems.
The two companies have maintained close ties, with AMD CEO Lisa Su recently visiting Korea and Samsung Electronics.
According to market research firms including Counterpoint Research and TrendForce, Samsung Electronics ranked first in the global DRAM market in the second quarter of this year, with a 39% share, and in the NAND market, with a 29.3% share.
Samsung Electronics is also expected to have the capacity to produce about 8,175,000 DRAM wafers annually this year, based on 300-mm wafers, surpassing SK hynix (6,660,000 wafers) and Micron Technology, Inc. (3,600,000 wafers), market research firm Omdia estimated.
The OCP Global Summit is an annual event attended by companies from around the world in the IT, semiconductor, server and data center industries to discuss open hardware technologies, standardization and directions for innovation in AI infrastructure.

[email protected] Lee Seok-woo, International Affairs Specialist Reporter