SK hynix and Sandisk have introduced the industry's first standards for high-bandwidth flash (HBF), a storage technology designed to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) inference by enabling faster data transfers, similar to the role high-bandwidth memory (HBM) plays in AI systems.

According to SK hynix, the two companies will unveil the standards at the Future of Memory and Storage 2026 exhibition, held in California from Tuesday through Thursday (local time). Through keynote speeches and panel discussions, they will present HBF as a key technology for addressing memory bottlenecks in the AI era.

In AI accelerators, HBF is designed to sit between HBM and storage devices such as solid-state drives (SSDs). It offers significantly higher bandwidth than SSDs while retaining the large storage capacity of NAND flash memory.

As AI inference drives explosive growth in the amount of data processing, HBF is drawing attention as a technology capable of delivering both high bandwidth and scalable storage capacity.

The new standards came six months after SK hynix formed a consortium with Sandisk. They defined two configurations of stacking eight or 16 NAND dies, supporting capacities of up to 512 gigabytes (GB). The standards also classified bandwidth into three grades, ranging from about 0.4 terabytes per second (Tbps) to 3.0 Tbps.

SK hynix stressed that HBF and logic processors will be connected through Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe), an open standard for high-speed chiplet interconnects, allowing HBF to be more flexibly integrated with central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs) and other logic processors.

The standards also cover interface and electrical specifications, reliability and packaging guidelines for HBF die stacks, and software guidelines for data input and output.

In the semiconductor industry, publishing technical standards is generally seen as a first step toward building an ecosystem around a new technology, allowing multiple companies to develop compatible products under a common specification.

SK hynix said it will leverage the standard publication as an opportunity to expand the adoption of HBF technology in the AI storage market and foster the surrounding ecosystem. With Google and Tenstorrent currently participating in the HBF consortium, the consortium will expand its reach while enhancing technical maturity and market acceptance based on open collaboration.

On the first day of the event, SK hynix Executive Vice President Kim Chun-sung and Vice President Kang Uk-song will deliver a joint keynote address on improving AI infrastructure efficiency through tiered memory architecture. On Thursday, SK hynix Vice President Lim Eui-cheol, Sandisk Vice President Rajeev Nagabhirava and Google DeepMind Senior Staff Engineer Xiaoyu Ma will join a panel discussion titled “Breaking the Memory Wall with HBF.”

Throughout the event, SK hynix will operate a booth to showcase its new technologies including its 10th-generation 375-layer 4D NAND wafer and products.

“With the rapid spread of AI applications, we are at a point where overall data processing structures must be redesigned,” Kim said.

“Through HBF, SK hynix will expand the boundaries between memory and storage and contribute to building new architectures that enhance overall system efficiency.”