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SK hynix and Sandisk introduce High Bandwidth Flash standard to bridge memory and storage gaps for AI

SK hynix and Sandisk have collaborated to unveil the first standard specifications for High Bandwidth Flash (HBF), a new storage technology designed to bridge the performance gap between High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and enterprise SSDs. By utilizing stacked NAND flash instead of DRAM, HBF offers SSD-like capacities—up to 512GB per module—while maintaining HBM-like speeds. This technology is positioned to complement HBM by handling read-heavy tasks, such as the decode phase of AI inference, where model weights are accessed repeatedly. Because HBF is non-volatile and supports the UCIe industry standard, it allows for flexible integration across various CPUs and GPUs. The administration announced that the first samples of HBF are expected to be available in AI inference devices early next year. While HBF offers significant capacity advantages over HBM, it faces trade-offs in write endurance and access latency. However, by providing a cost-effective way to store multi-trillion-parameter models, HBF aims to enhance overall system efficiency in the AI era.

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