interface news reporter yin jingfei

Interface News Editor

on November 22, HBM (HighBand with Memory, high frequency and wide width memory) concept shares strengthened again, Yawei shares (002559.SZ) rose by 5 consecutive boards again, tai chi industry (600667.SH) rose by 5 boards, yishitong (688733.SH), jingfang technology (603005.SH), huahai chengke (688535.SH) and others rose one after another.

The HBM concept has been going on for days. What happened behind this? In fact, the cold wave of storage price reduction has been blowing since last year, but with the help of AI technology, the spring of storage chips has quietly arrived, and HBM has been pushed to the tuyere.

The ChatGPT boom is driving rapid growth in demand for HBM, and the global storage (DRAM) trio is racing to add to HBM. TrendForce research shows that in 2022, HBM will account for 50% of SK Hynix, 40% of Samsung and 10% of Micron.

Among all memory chips, HBM is regarded as "the most suitable memory chip for AI training and reasoning". popular understanding, HBM is a new memory chip technology. Its function is similar to the "transfer station" of data, that is, every frame, every image and other image data used are saved into the frame buffer area and waited for GPU to call. In terms of technical means, multiple memory chips are stacked together and packaged with GPU to realize large-capacity and high-speed data transmission, which can meet the needs of high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, big data and other fields.

HBM station outlet, but also drive the domestic related industrial chain take-off.

What are the relevant domestic industrial chains?

Founder Securities Research Report pointed out that, overall, the HBM industry chain is mainly composed of IP, upstream materials, grain design and manufacturing, chip manufacturing, packaging and testing and other five major links. As the international large factories are using IDM mode, the design, manufacture and sealing of the chip are all done by the large factory.

Domestic manufacturers are mainly in the upstream equipment and material supply.

The process flow of HBM includes the steps of TSV formation, insulating layer full gas insulation, barrier layer seed layer deposition, plating filling, CMP polishing, etc.

On the upstream device side: Domestic TSV and wafer-level packaging demand growth. The TSV is an HBM core process. The so-called TSV((Through Silicon Via) Chinese full name is through silicon via technology, which is through the production of vertical conduction between chips and wafers. TSV technology realizes the vertical electrical interconnection of through-silicon vias through the filling of conductive substances such as copper, tungsten and polysilicon. This technology is currently the only vertical electrical interconnection technology and is one of the key technologies to realize 3D advanced packaging. The cost of this technology accounts for nearly 30%, which is the highest part of HBM package cost.

at material end , The uniqueness of HBM is mainly reflected in stacking and interconnection. Material ends can be divided into manufacturing materials and packaging materials.

For manufacturing materials: One of the cores of HBM is stacking, and the amount of domestic precursors has doubled.

For packaging materials: HBM will drive the growth of domestic TSV and wafer-level packaging demand, and put forward higher requirements for package height and thermal performance, with key raw materials for 3D packaging becoming the core. According to the survey records of listed companies, in terms of key raw materials for 3D packaging, granular epoxy molding compound (GMC)HBM needs to be packaged with special granular epoxy molding compound (GMC) due to high chip thickness caused by 3D stacking. In order to solve the problems of increased thickness of HBM package and large heat dissipation demand, GMC needs to add a large amount of core materials low-alpha ball silicon and low-alpha ball aluminum, accounting for 70%-90% of GMC cost.

In addition to key raw materials for 3D packaging, HBM also brings demand for domestic IC carrier boards. HBM uses TSV technology to achieve 2.5D + 3D advanced integration, and the IC carrier board is the key carrier of the advanced packaging link of the integrated circuit, realizing the signal connection between the IC chip and the PCB board. In the currently widely used 2.5D + 3D advanced packaged integrated circuits, the IC carrier board is used as the adapter board for carrying the chip.

With the popularity of the HBM concept, many listed companies said they were involved in the business, and many brokerage firms reported recommend related concept stocks. According to the statistics of interface news, HBM, a big hype concept, can be subdivided into at least granular epoxy plastic compound (GMC) concept, precursor concept, TSV concept, HBM packaging concept, Heasly related company concept, etc., involving at least 25 listed companies.

huahai chengke, which had stepped out of the 20% limit, said on November 20 that granular epoxy plastic packaging materials were still in the verification stage and had not been sold in batch and had not been used for HBM packaging.

Feikai Materials (300398.SZ) said on the investor interaction platform on November 20 that the company's particle-filled packaging material GMC is still in the research and development stage.

Jacques Technology (002409.SZ) said in a recent investor survey that the company currently has more than 30 precursor products, which can basically cover the current needs of domestic semiconductor manufacturers. At the same time, the company also reserves some future-oriented products to meet the new needs of semiconductor manufacturers in the future.