SK Hynix and SanDisk Unveil World's First High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) Standard to Overcome AI Memory Wall

On August 4, 2026, at FMS (Future of Memory and Storage) 2026 in Santa Clara, SK Hynix and SanDisk unveiled the industry's first standard specifications for High Bandwidth Flash (HBF). Designed in collaboration through the Open Compute Project (OCP) alongside Google DeepMind and Tenstorrent, HBF leverages 3D 4D-NAND and UCIe interconnects to deliver up to 3TB/s bandwidth and 512GB capacity per package to break the AI server memory bottleneck.

Breaking the AI Memory Wall with Tiered Storage Architecture

As large language models and multimodal AI workloads exceed traditional High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) physical capacities, HBF expands flash memory into the active memory hierarchy. By utilizing tenth-generation 375-layer 4D NAND and UCIe die-to-die interconnects, HBF provides 2.5 times higher power efficiency than conventional flash storage, allowing AI accelerators to access massive datasets locally with near-zero latency.

Key Technical & Specification Highlights

• 3TB/s Memory Bandwidth: High-throughput die-stacked 4D NAND architecture running over open UCIe standards.
• 512GB Density per Package: Expands working memory capacity beyond physical HBM limits for trillion-parameter AI models.
• 2.5x Energy Efficiency Gain: Built using SK Hynix's 10th-gen 375-layer V10 4D NAND technology.
• Ecosystem Collaboration: Developed with OCP, Google DeepMind, SanDisk, and Tenstorrent for open data center adoption.

Industry Impact and Ecosystem Adoption

The release of open HBF specifications within six months of consortium formation provides cloud providers and chipmakers with a standardized blueprint for tiered memory architectures. SK Hynix and SanDisk highlighted that HBF will complement HBM and CXL technologies in next-generation 6G and physical AI data center infrastructure.

Technology & Event Summary