SK and Samsung personnel changed by customized HBM... Technological expertise leads the American business

As SK Hynix selected a memory development expert to lead its U.S. semiconductor business, both SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics were fully placed in charge of technology in the Americas.

This is a stepping stone to strengthen collaboration with major customers from the product planning stage, as big American tech customers such as NVIDIA must participate in research and development from the time of designing artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators to win volumes.

The role of executives in securing technical discussions and orders in the United States, where major customers are located, is also growing.

According to SK Group on the 9th, SK Hynix, which recently reshuffled its president, will strengthen its workforce in the Americas business through follow-up personnel and organizational reorganization on the 3rd of next month.

This is a follow-up measure following the creation of a new president-level executive, 'Americas General Manager', and the appointment of Ahn Hyeon, president of development, in the personnel reshuffle on the 30th of last month.

President Ahn is the person who has led the development of AI memory such as high bandwidth memory (HBM) and SOCAMM at SK Hynix.

SK Hynix, which has mainly had sales and marketing experts at the head of its American corporations, is putting engineers at the forefront.

Samsung Electronics also has a technology expert in charge of its semiconductor business in the Americas.

In December 2024, Samsung Electronics appointed Vice President Cho Sang-yeon, who was in charge of solution development in the memory division, to head the Americas division of the semiconductor (DS) division.

If Jinman Han, who was in charge of the Americas division before Vice President Cho, was a strategy and marketing expert who started his career with DRAM design, he put more emphasis on technology.

Behind this personnel flow is a change in the way HBM orders are received.

In the standard HBM, which has been the mainstay of the market so far, memory manufacturers present products that meet the performance requirements of customers, negotiate terms, and supply them to multiple customers. However, starting next year, the era of 'custom HBM', in which memory design is adjusted according to the customer's AI semiconductor and task characteristics, will begin in earnest.

The memory semiconductor business is expanding to design together from the beginning of development according to the customer's AI semiconductor structure.

A representative example is 'NVHBM', a customized HBM that NVIDIA released in August. NVIDIA proposed a design that put the memory control circuit, which was located on the accelerator side, into the 'base die', which is the chip at the bottom of the HBM. This is an example where an accelerator company is even involved in the design of the circuit that will go inside the memory.

Early identification of customer needs locally and coordination of design changes or sample production/verification schedules with the head office development team have become part of the competition to win orders.

At the TSMC Technology Symposium held in the U.S. last April, when he was in charge of development, President Ahn Hyeon also revealed the direction of "(memory companies) going beyond simple suppliers and evolving into creators who are considering necessary solutions from the architecture design stage."

SK Hynix said in its recent third quarter earnings conference call, "In the long term, as the importance of customized HBM optimized for each customer's system and workload is increasing, as well as the stable supply of standard HBM, we are working closely with major customers to pursue related projects."

An official in the semiconductor industry said, "Now we can maintain competitiveness only by working closely with customers and conducting research and development (R&D) together," and added, "It has become important to win orders to go beyond simple customer support for released products and support the technology development of future products."