HBM 'Father' Kim Jung-ho: AI Chip Landscape to Undergo Fundamental Change, Memory to Replace GPU as Dominant Player

For those tracking AI chip trends, the current GPU-dominated era may soon shift. Kim Jung-ho, the pioneer of HBM (high-bandwidth memory) and a professor at KAIST, says AI chip architecture will undergo a fundamental change—memory will replace GPUs as the core component.

As AI evolves from generative AI to intelligent agents, memory bottlenecks have become a critical issue. Kim notes that AI's hallucination problems stem from memory limitations, and future systems need 1000 times more bandwidth and capacity. He compares HBM to short-term memory and HBF (high-bandwidth flash) to long-term memory, emphasizing the need for both.

Industry competition is already underway: SK Hynix and SanDisk are promoting HBF standardization, while Samsung is investing heavily in HBM4E and NAND architectures. Kim predicts HBF prototypes will emerge in 2027, with tech giants adopting the technology by 2028, marking a shift to memory-centric computing.