SK hynix has published its DRAM roadmap at its SK AI Summit 2025. While the plans are displayed in a very general way and do not reveal important specifics, they still show the direction of DRAM technology evolution and approximate timelines of the emergence of new technologies. Naturally, since SK hynix demonstrated the roadmap at an AI event, it has a clear bias towards AI servers.
DDR5 will continue to offer the balance between cost, density, and performance for years to come, albeit in form factors like MRDIMM Gen2 that is set to arrive in 2026 – 2027 and support data transfer rates of 12,800 MT/s, or 2nd Generation CXL memory expanders expected to hit the market in 2027 – 2028. As reported multiple times, DDR6 will only arrive in 2029 or 2030; before that, DDR5 will keep evolving.
LPDDR6 — which now features a host of data center-oriented capabilities on the silicon level — is projected to wed high-capacity, high-performance, and lowered power consumption towards the end of the decade. SK hynix expects SOCAMM2 modules based on LPDDR6 to arrive in the late 2020s, possibly when Nvidia rolls out its post-Vera CPUs, and will need a new memory subsystem. Interestingly, SK hynix plans to release LPDDR6-PIM (processing-in-module) solutions for specialized applications sometime in 2028.
As for GDDR7, it will remain a niche solution for inference accelerators, such as Nvidia's Rubin CPX, as it combines very high performance and relatively low cost (compared to HBM), but lacks much-needed capacity. SK hynix lists 'GDDR7-Next,' which probably means GDDR8, as the company is not known for developing Nvidia-specific solutions, unlike Micron, which has developed GDDR5X and GDDR6X for Nvidia.
The highest-performing DRAM solutions from SK hynix in the coming years will be HBM4, HBM4E, HBM5, and HBM5E memory solutions that will be released in 1.5 – 2-year cadences from now through 2031. Interestingly, it does not look like HBM5 — which presumably powers Nvidia's Feynman, that is set to land in late 2028 — will show up until 2029 or even 2030. For customers that need customized memory solutions, SK hynix will also offer custom HBM4E, HBM5, and HBM5E modules, though it remains to be seen how its customers plan to customize such devices.
As for high-bandwidth flash (HBF) products that promise to offer performance comparable to HBM and capacity comparable to 3D NAND, SK hynix does not expect them to arrive before 2030, as the company must develop all-new media as well as agree on the final specification with other makers of NAND memory, particularly SanDisk, which proposed the technology earlier this year.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.
