SanDisk unveils High Bandwidth Flash (HBF), a NAND-based alternative to HBM
HBF matches HBM bandwidth, offering 8–16x capacity at a lower cost
SanDisk is planning to establish a technical advisory board of industry experts
It certainly seems as if splitting from Western Digital has lit a fire under Sandisk. At its recent investors day, the flash memory specialist look the wraps off super large SSDs, with the promise of even larger ones to come, and unveiled a new, cheaper DRAM alternative called 3D Memory Matrix.
At the same event, Sandisk also unveiled its High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) concept which is taking aim at HBM by augmenting it with NAND flash to cater to AI inference workloads. Sandisk’s key objectives with HBF seems to be to match HBM bandwidth while providing 8–16 times the capacity at a similar cost.
According to a slide that Sandisk shared, HBF combines BiCS technology with CBA wafer bonding, allowing for efficient high-density stacking. The company has developed a proprietary stacking technology that reportedly delivers ultra-low die warpage, making it possible to achieve 16-die stacking without major structural issues.
