Micron Technology’s quarterly earnings call last week allowed management of the American company to share more detailed plans for the development of its product range. If Micron starts producing HBM4 memory chips in 2026, it will later launch production of HBM4E, the main feature of which will be a customizable base crystal.
Image source: Micron Technology
This part of the memory stack is at its core and contains the basic logic necessary to work with the memory chips located above. Micron is going to provide the HBM4E base crystal with the set of functions that are of interest to specific large customers. It is difficult to say in advance how much freedom Micron will have in this area, but it is obvious that JEDEC standards will define some framework. From a purely technical standpoint, Micron will be able to add support for new interfaces, increase the cache size, add data encryption, and so on.
As Micron’s CEO highlighted last week, “HBM4E will provide a paradigm shift in the memory business by offering the ability to customize the underlying logic chip for certain customers using TSMC’s advanced manufacturing process.” Such customization capabilities will improve Micron’s financial performance, according to CEO Sanjay Mehrotra.
If we return to the closer HBM4, then Micron intends to produce memory chips for stacks of this type using its 10-nm fifth-generation class (1β) process technology, while competing SK hynix and Samsung are eyeing more modern 10-nm sixth-class technology generations. The presence of a 2048-bit bus will allow HBM4 to provide information transfer rates of up to 6.4 gigatransactions per second. The company expects to launch mass production of HBM4 in the 2026 calendar year. Now Micron is already actively supplying 8-tier HBM3E stacks for Nvidia Blackwell accelerators; 12-tier ones are being tested by customers and receiving the most flattering reviews, according to company management.