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On August 6, Reuters reported that major Chinese companies and startups are stockpiling Samsung Electronics' high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips in response to U.S. restrictions on chip exports to China. Since the beginning of this year, these companies have stepped up their purchases of artificial intelligence semiconductors, allowing Chinese companies to account for about 30% of Samsung's HBM revenue share.

Pan Gongyu, a researcher at the Observer.com Mind Observation Institute, analyzed that the emergence of HBM is mainly to solve the memory access time and rate of high-performance computing, especially GPU, and reduce storage power consumption. It brings 3D innovation to the advanced packaging system, stacking through TSV silicon vias and directly packaging with GPU, and then connecting with GPU with bump and silicon middle layer, breaking through the bandwidth bottleneck of DRAM with a more compact packaging area.

Currently, there are only three major chip manufacturers in the industry that produce HBM chips: South Korea's K Hynix, Samsung, and the United States' Micron Technology.

Last week, Reuters reported that U.S. authorities plan to unveil an export control package this month that is expected to set out parameters for limiting access to HBM, imposing new restrictions on China’s semiconductor industry.

Sources said Micron has not sold its HBM products to China since last year, while SK Hynix, which has Nvidia as a major customer, is more focused on advanced HBM chip production.

SK Hynix said earlier this year that it was adjusting production to expand HBM3E output and that its HBM chips for this year were sold out and its HBM chips for 2025 were almost sold out.

Reuters reported in July this year that SK Hynix began mass production of the fifth-generation HBM chip, HBM3E, in March this year. The first batch of products will be supplied to Nvidia. SK Hynix also achieved its highest profit in six years due to the AI ​​boom. Samsung's fourth-generation HBM (HBM3) has been recognized by Nvidia, but has not yet reached Nvidia's HBM3E chip standard.

The global AI boom has led to tight supply of advanced chips. "Given that domestic technology development has not yet fully matured, China's demand for Samsung HBM has become unusually high as other manufacturers' capacity has been fully booked by U.S. AI companies," said Nori Chiou, investment director at White Oak Capital Partners in Singapore.

According to sources, China's chip demand is mainly concentrated in the HBM2E model, which is two generations behind the HBM3E version. Samsung will be more affected by the new HBM export restrictions than companies that are less dependent on the Chinese market.

"Currently, several leading companies such as Hynix, Samsung, and Micron are moving towards the fifth-generation HBM. The domestic related industry chain is limited by GPU performance and packaging equipment and materials. In advanced packaging, it can only make breakthroughs in single points such as HBM precursor and TSV. In addition, HBM is an extremely expensive project. The industry generally estimates that its cost is three times that of GDDR5, and it even directly determines the selling price of NVIDIA H200 and AMD MI300 (HBM3E can account for two-thirds of the total cost of high-end AI accelerators). For domestic storage manufacturers, catching up with overseas manufacturers requires uninterrupted high investment." Pan Gongyu analyzed.

While it is difficult to estimate the number or value of HBM chips in China’s stockpile, sources told Reuters that technology companies ranging from satellite makers to Tencent, Baidu and startup Zhongke Haoxin have been buying the chips.

Reuters commented that the tensions are affecting the global semiconductor supply chain.

Last week, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said that the United States's "coercion of other countries to suppress China's semiconductor industry" undermines global trade and harms the interests of all parties. China hopes that relevant countries can resist the United States' efforts and safeguard their own long-term interests. "Containment and suppression cannot stop China's development, but will only strengthen China's determination and ability to develop scientific and technological independence."

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