On May 29, 2026, South Korea's Munhwa Ilbo reported that 'Samsung Electronics has begun shipping the world's first 12-layer samples of 'HBM4E,' the 7th generation HBM (High Bandwidth Memory).'

Samsung Electronics had just begun mass production shipments of the world's first 6th generation 'HBM4' in February. By starting to supply the 7th generation 'HBM4E' in approximately three months, it appears to have embarked on securing an early lead in the next-generation AI memory market.

HBM4E achieves an operating speed of up to 16Gbps per pin, an improvement of over 20% compared to the previous generation. It realizes a bandwidth of 3.6TB (terabytes) per second per single stack, maximizing the computation speed of large language models (LLM) and next-generation AI systems. Its capacity also increased by over 30% compared to the previous generation, reaching 48GB (gigabytes).

Samsung Electronics plans to expand its lineup from 32GB (8-layer) to 64GB (16-layer) in the future, tailored to each customer's service environment. Starting with this sample supply, it intends to proceed with mass production supply according to customer schedules.

Fan Sang-jun, Vice President of Development at Samsung Electronics' Memory Business Division, said, 'Following the successful mass production of HBM4, the seamless completion of HBM4E sample supply has impressed the market with Samsung Electronics' outstanding technological leadership.' He added, 'Moving forward, we will continue to lead the growth of the global AI memory market based on an overwhelming technological gap and proactive investment in production infrastructure.'

SK Hynix is also expected to ship HBM4E soon, and competition between the two companies in the HBM4E market is expected to intensify further.

In response to this article, Korean netizens commented, 'What a truly wonderful company,' 'We must improve the treatment of research and development personnel, especially those with doctorates. Let's attract more excellent talent to maintain the world's best position,' 'Researchers should be given sufficient performance-based pay, rather than those strange union members,' and 'Factory workers are only demanding performance pay, but researchers should be valued,' among many other voices saying, 'The treatment of great researchers should be made more generous.' (Translation/Editing: Asae)