Samsung unveils world's first HBM memory with integrated AI processing

Samsung, the world's biggest memory chip maker, has announced that it has developed the world's first HBM (high-bandwidth memory) chip with integrated AI processing. The new chip not only improves AI processing performance but also lowers power consumption. The company has named the new memory chip HBM-PIM where PIM stands for ‘processing in memory'.

The South Korean firm's HBM2 Aquabolt memory chip, which was first launched in 2018, was used to develop the new HBM-PIM memory. The PIM part features advanced logic-based processing units, and it more than doubles the AI processing performance and reduces power consumption by 70%. The new memory chip from Samsung will mostly be used in high-performance computing servers and AI applications.

In the standard computer architecture, memory and processing are kept separate, which increases the latency when a lot of data is moved between them. To overcome those latency issues, Samsung created HBM-PIM. The new chip is also compatible with the previous-generation HBM interface, which means companies can set up AI accelerators without changing existing hardware and software.

Samsung mentioned in a press release that it will supply HBM-PIM chips to customers for testing and verification in the first half of 2021, and then work with clients to standardize the PIM platform across the ecosystem.

Asif Iqbal Shaik - Senior Editor

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First Samsung device: T100

Asif is a computer engineer turned technology journalist. He has been using Samsung phones since 2004, and his current smartphone is the Galaxy S21 Ultra. He loves headphones, mechanical keyboards, and PC hardware. When not writing about technology, he likes watching crime and science fiction movies and TV shows.

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