- SanDisk unveils Excessive Bandwidth Flash (HBF), a NAND-based various to HBM
- HBF matches HBM bandwidth, providing 8–16x capability at a decrease value
- SanDisk is planning to determine a technical advisory board of trade consultants
It actually appears as if splitting from Western Digital has lit a hearth underneath Sandisk. At its latest buyers day, the flash reminiscence specialist look the wraps off tremendous massive SSDs, with the promise of even bigger ones to come back, and unveiled a brand new, cheaper DRAM various known as 3D Reminiscence Matrix.
On the identical occasion, Sandisk additionally unveiled its Excessive Bandwidth Flash (HBF) idea which is taking goal at HBM by augmenting it with NAND flash to cater to AI inference workloads. Sandisk’s key aims with HBF appears to be to match HBM bandwidth whereas offering 8–16 occasions the capability at an analogous value.
In accordance with a slide that Sandisk shared, HBF combines BiCS know-how with CBA wafer bonding, permitting for environment friendly high-density stacking. The corporate has developed a proprietary stacking know-how that reportedly delivers ultra-low die warpage, making it attainable to realize 16-die stacking with out main structural points.
Scaling as much as 4TB
The structure of HBF has been developed over the previous 12 months, with Sandisk incorporating enter from “main AI gamers” (it doesn’t title names, sadly).
The diagram within the slide exhibits an HBF stack, which consists of a number of HBF core dies related through TSV (By way of-Silicon By way of) and micro bumps, interfacing with a logic die and PHY, which then connects to a GPU, CPU, TPU, or SoC die. Your entire stack sits on an interposer atop a package deal substrate, much like the packaging design utilized in HBM.
HBF isn’t a straight drop-in alternative for HBM, nevertheless it does share the identical electrical interface, so will solely require minor protocol changes, in line with Sandisk.
In one other slide, a GPU with HBM offering 192GB of whole reminiscence, is in contrast with another model combining HBF and HBM that will increase the reminiscence capability to 3TB. A completely optimized setup with solely HBF (which you’ll be able to see on the high of the web page) can scale as much as a formidable 4TB.
Sandisk’s HBF roadmap (under) exhibits how the corporate sees the know-how advancing throughout a number of generations, specializing in capability, learn bandwidth, and power effectivity. Within the first era, HBF establishes a baseline for these metrics. By the second era, capability is predicted to extend by 1.5x, whereas learn bandwidth sees a 1.45x enchancment, and power effectivity barely decreases to 0.8x. By the third era (there’s no indication of when Sandisk expects to reach at this level), HBF is projected to double in capability and skim bandwidth in comparison with its preliminary model, with power effectivity dropping additional to 0.64x.
HBF is more likely to obtain some push again from rivals like Samsung and SK Hynix who’re closely invested within the $100 billion HBM market. Painfully conscious of this, Sandisk is trying to set up an open customary ecosystem, and in addition a technical advisory board made up of trade consultants and key companions.
