Nvidia sidesteps JEDEC HBM standard

What happened

Nvidia has effectively sent JEDEC back to the drawing board with its HBM standard: Nvidia revolted against HBM memory controller functionality being in its GPU chip and, in its NVHBM custom HBM standard, moved it to the HBM base die unit, freeing up space for more GPU cores; the change is part of its August NVLInk Fusion announcement. Nvidia claims (a vendor claim, not a verified achieved result) that, compared with standard HBM4E, NVHBM delivers up to 30 percent greater memory bandwidth, 15 percent lower HBM power consumption, and frees up to 25 percent more area on its GPU compute die; this is specific to Nvidia and is not an industry standard. According to reported Morgan Stanley data, Nvidia will be responsible for purchasing 37 percent of the global HBM supply in 2027, so the three HBM suppliers — Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron — are supporting NVHBM and even let Nvidia dictate that they must use TSMC's 3nm foundry process; Reuters reported Samsung will accede to this request, but per Seoul Economic Daily, Samsung would still build JEDEC standard HBM in-house for other customers. Amazon's Annapurna Labs is also supporting NVHBM as an Nvidia NVlink partner. JEDEC has not issued any public comment about NVHBM; when JEDEC announced the HBM4 standard in April last year, the HBM subcommittee chair was Barry Wagner, Director of Technical Marketing at Nvidia. Beyond the stated reason of freeing GPU-core space and moving the memory controller, the source does not state another cause.

Impact and signal

Affected components and suppliers

Source and time

Source: Blocks & Files · 10/26/2026 · View original source