It feels like the AI industry is getting all the cool stuff right now (not that it necessarily knows what to do with it, but I digress). Besides hoovering up all of the RAM and system storage it can get its mites on, data centres tend to be where we're seeing technological advancements in memory.

That brings us to High Bandwidth Flash (HBF), a fresh tech spec unveiled by SK hynix and Sandisk. The Korean memory manufacturer describes HBF as "a new memory layer between [High Bandwidth Memory] and SSDs," that should enable "high-speed data transfer similar to HBM while significantly expanding capacity by leveraging NAND technology."

At the risk of oversimplifying, you can think of HBF as a bit like HBM and NAND all rolled into one thing.

HBF is pitched as a solution to various "bandwidth and capacity scalability challenges," and emerges into a landscape where big tech is still very keen to throw money at its AI infrastructure build-out.

SK hynix says HBF will kick off with up to 512 GB of capacity, which isn't much by SSD standards but a fair chunk by HBM standards. Similarly, while lower than HBM bandwidth compared to some stacks of HBM4e memory, a bandwidth of 0.4 to 3 TB/s for HBF isn't too shabby.

Interestingly though, neither SK hynix nor Sandisk will be holding on to the HBF specification as proprietary tech—instead, it's been disclosed as an open standard via the Open Compute Project (OCP). That means any memory manufacturer could make its own HBF based on the open standard.

HBF tech will also appeal to manufacturers and hyperscalers alike as the specification uses the 'Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express' (UCIe) connection interface. Essentially, this would allow the fresh spec to be used with an array of processors, including CPUs and GPUs, within a single package.

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Actually, let's talk about SK hynix in the context of the wider memory supply crisis for a sec. Company CEO Kwak Noh-Jung recently predicted that "Customer demand will remain higher than our supply capacity even beyond 2030." Similarly Samsung, another member of the 'big three' memory manufacturers, also recently warned of even more severe shortages ahead in 2027, and that this "will persist through 2028".

In a bid to combat this, SK hynix is set to invest over $60 billion in chip plants in its home of South Korea, though the supply crisis is still far from ending. Just for a start, memory prices are predicted to rise as much as 50% during Q3. As for memory manufacturer SK hynix, it just announced another record-breaking $55.6 billion quarter.

As an open standard, the HBF specification may not directly add to SK hynix's revenue pool—though any memory the company manufactures based on the specification surely will.

Jess has been writing about games for over ten years, spending a significant chunk of that time working on print publications PLAY and Official PlayStation Magazine. When she’s not investigating all things hardware here, she's either constructing a passionate defence of a 7/10 game, daydreaming about her debut novel, or feeling wistful about the last time she chased some nerds around a field with an oversized foam sword.