Shenzen Successfully Holds GMIF2024 Innovation Summit as AI Era Shapes Memory Industry

The Third GMIF2024 Innovation Summit (Global Memory Innovation Forum) was successfully concluded in Shenzhen. The GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit was hosted by the Semiconductor Investment Alliance and the Shenzhen Memory Industry Association and co-organised by the Guangdong Integrated Circuit Industry Association, Shenzhen Semiconductor Industry Association, JW Insights Consulting (Xiamen) Co., Ltd., and Haitong Securities Co., Ltd.

With the theme of “AI Leads Memory’s New Momentum,” the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit brought together leading enterprises from various segments of the memory industry chain, including major wafer manufacturers, memory controller suppliers, module producers, packaging and testing enterprises, equipment and materials manufacturers, and terminal manufacturers. Representatives from investment institutions also gathered at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit.

The GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit centered around all aspects of key topics such as product innovation, technological evolution, and the collaborative development of the industrial chain, all with the aim of advancing industry cooperation and creating a shared future of success.

GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit: Accelerating Deployment of AI Applications to Unlock New Growth in the Storage Industry

The explosive growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the new era is reshaping the global semiconductor landscape. The widespread application of AI is driving demand for high-performance, high-computing-power chips, while also creating significant growth opportunities for high-bandwidth, large-capacity, and low-power storage chips. These were the overarching subthemes of the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit.

The GMIF2024 Innovation Summit officially kicked off with welcoming remarks from Rixin Sun, President at the Shenzhen Memory Industry Association (SMIA). Over the recent years, the exponential growth of AI, 5G, Big Data and Internet has seen a brand-new revolutionising period in global storage industry. Sun addressed that the GMIF2024 Innovation Summit turns special attention to the entire upstream and downstream storage value chain that goes beyond just the storage and memory itself. In particular, it unfolds critical areas across the industry, consisting of storage media, solutions, system platforms, testing equipment and more. He affirmed that only through collaboration across the entire industry chain can we continuously drive the advancement of the sector and maintain a leading position in global competition.

Xiaofei Zhang, Chief Analyst for Electronics Industry at Haitong Securities, stated at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit that from the perspective of overall storage market, the HBM3e has exerted impacts on the production schedule of DDR5, and the decline in DRAM prices remains restricted. In the NAND sector, the inventory adjustments at server terminals are entering the final stages; coupled with AI driving demand for high-capacity storage products, prices have continued to rise in Q2. Although the recent increase in NAND prices has slowed, it still exceeds market concerns. Looking ahead, the penetration of AI terminal applications is accelerating, leading to a sustained increase in demand for computing and storage solutions.

Yimao Cai, Dean of the School of Integrated Circuits at Peking University, expressed in his presentation at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit that semiconductor storage, considered as one of the largest segment of the integrated circuit industry, has encountered considerable challenges after stepping into the post-Moore and AI era. On one hand, traditional memory technologies have posed significant limits on the integration density and reliability below 28nm, and there is an urgent need for breakthroughs in underlying technologies.

On the other hand, the traditional computing chips are insufficient to satisfy the high-efficiency demands for intelligent equipment, catalysed by the surging growth in AI computing needs, as the traditional chip hardware incurs high costs and energy consumption. It can be observed that innovations in foundational units and process integration are crucial to the progress of memory technology, and new forms of storage technology are becoming increasingly mature.

As he spoke at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit, Prasad Alluri, VP and GM for Client Storage, SBU, at Micron Technology, emphasised: “AI is everywhere and AI applications have entered every corner of people’s daily lives in all kinds of forms. For instance, smartphone manufacturers have introduced AI capabilities in high-end phones, and the storage capacity of LPDDR 5 has been increased to between 12GB and 16GB to accommodate ever-increasing datasets. In addition, storage technology has evolved to UFS 4.0, which more than doubles power efficiency compared to the previous generation.”

He added: “In the realm of edge devices, autonomous driving will be elevated from Level 0 to Level 5 supported by the enhanced AI technology. Industry experts predict that the bit density required for automotive memory will increase by approximately 30 times, while the non-collision bits in power systems will grow nearly 100 times. None of the enhancements, whether in data centers, edge devices, or memory and storage environments, would be possible without the technological progress we’ve achieved generation after generation.”

A Constantly Evolving and Highly Competitive Space

Dr Yan Li, Vice President of Advanced Technology at Western Digital, pointed out that the 3D NAND flash market is highly competitive and constantly evolving. The number of NAND cells stacked has experienced substantial growth, from 48 layers in 2017 to 64 and 96 layers. Up to date, Western Digital has completed mass production of its 218-layer products, while Micron Technology has already mass-produced its 280-layer products as stated in its keynote.

Dr Li shared her insights that the continuous increase of layers might not be considered as an ideal strategy because large amounts of capitals are required for new equipment as complexity of the products rises. Should the market fail to accommodate these new products and prices start to decline, it could lead to a vicious cycle.

She then discussed at her GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit keynote the trade-offs involved in 3D NAND scaling technology. There are four main vectors to scaling: vertical scaling, lateral scaling, architecture scaling, and logical scaling. Taking its product PC SN5000S NVMe SSD as an example, Dr Li noted that this model is equipped with cost-effective BiCS6 NAND technology and DRAM-less QLC PCIe Gen4 SSD, and its internal controller and firmware provide a perfectly optimised solution that can be introduced to the market within a shorter time and allowed for quality control.

Wallace C. Kou, President and CEO at Silicon Motion, claimed that AI will be the ever-lasting energy and vitality that propel continuous growth in the global market. Storage is regarded as one of the key areas in the AI ecosystem, and the market requires more relevant software and applications to make AI edge devices more meaningful and appealing to consumers.

Benny Ni, GAR Sales VP at Solidigm, remarked that the company currently possesses leading innovative technologies in the fields of TLC and QLC, enabling it to offer a powerful portfolio of data centre storage products and storage solutions that optimise AI storage efficiency.

Zhinong Liu, Executive Vice President at UNISOC, signified that in the all-scenario AI computing system, software serves as the “engine,” chips as the “foundation,” the ecosystem as the “link,” and products as the “carrier.” Meanwhile, Haibing Xie, Director of Application Design in Centre at Intel China, mentioned that AI PCs are the best carriers for edge-side AI and will lead the next explosion in the PC industry. The Intel Core Ultra is equipped with powerful AI capabilities, enabling the deployment of “generative AI” on PCs.

Haiqing Huang, R&D Vice General Manager at Victory Giant Technology, revealed at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit that the AI investment landscape among global tech companies is currently marked by an unparalleled enthusiasm, and the three main application markets—smartphones, PCs, and servers, are bound to experience a welcome upswing brought by the development of AI applications.

Shining a Light on Testing and Packaging

Sam Sun, Chairman of BIWIN Storage, also spoke at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit and voiced that the evolving storage industry has brought a bright spot and prominent attention to the testing and packaging sector. This is particularly true as advanced packaging moves towards miniaturisation and integration, and technical barriers are progressively becoming higher. The company is deepening its research and development efforts in the integrated packaging and testing layout to enhance its competitive edge.

Rui Ding, General Manager, Product Department, Consumer Cloud Platform Business Group at iFLYTEK, also presented at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit and declared that the development of large models has transitioned AI from a “tool” to an “assistant,” capable of performing a wider range of tasks through more natural conversational forms. In the future, iFLYTEK hopes to collaborate with various industry stakeholders to promote the development of AI technology.

Chloe Ma, VP of China GTM for IoT Line at Business at Arm, claimed that the wave of AI is sweeping across various sectors. Generative AI is not only being deployed in the cloud but is also rapidly making its way to the edge, where storage plays a crucial role in AI computing from the cloud to the edge.

Feng Chen, Senior Vice President at Rockchip, mentioned at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit that an increasing number of industries and applications are integrating AI with IoT, making AIoT the optimal pathway for the intelligent transformation of traditional sectors and a key direction for the future development of the IoT. The rapid expansion of the AIoT market is creating opportunities for AIoT chips while also driving greater demands for data transmission, storage, and computing, which poses challenges for chip processing power.

Jie Chen, Co-Founder of and VP at Data Storage Technology at InnoGrit, highlighted that in the AI era, as well as the data age, higher challenges have been presented for storage technologies. Faster and more efficient SSD interfaces will contribute to breaking through storage limitations. On the other hand, Vic Huang, Vice General Manager at QUANXING Technology, noted that the computing architecture of solutions provided by QUANXING is not constrained by the size of large models, which contributes to a significant reduction in the cost of local deployment.

In his GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit presentation, Zheng Qiu, Technical Marketing Manager at Montage Technology, remarked that the rapid development of AI has generated immense demand for both computing power and storage capacity, while Don Hu, Vice President of Marketing at Allwinner Technology, shared insights on the company’s industrial layout, technological direction, and industry applications. In particular, he introduced Allwinner’s exploration in areas such as general-purpose computing power, dedicated computing power, computational expansion, and multi-modal sensing. He also explained how Allwinner gives a full play to the fundamental role played by computing power to provide high-quality chips and services.

Evolving High-Bandwidth Memory at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit

Lei Hu, Director of Business Management at Applied Materials (AMAT), conducted an in-depth analysis of the technologies involved in high-bandwidth memory, including DRAM chips, logic controllers, and HBM stacks, as well as the additional material engineering processes. He further added in his GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit  presentation that AMAT is capable of providing clients with cutting-edge packaging equipment to empower the elevation of customer value by taking advantage of its strong R&D capabilities to facilitate the advancement of high-bandwidth memory technology.

Taking his turn at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit, Lee Chee Ping, Senior Director at LAM Research, commented that the AI chip market is flourishing with rapid growth, and the enhancement of AI chip performance requires the essential support of advanced packaging. Moreover, advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration are also the primary methods in the semiconductor industry for optimizing performance, power, form factor, and cost.

Youngsuk Kim, Director at DISCO, remarked that from 2023 to 2029, the advanced packaging market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11%, making 2.5D/3D packaging equipment increasingly important. DISCO has extensive experience in mass production and has closely collaborated with customers during the R&D phase, providing solutions for thinning and cutting HBM and 2.5D-PKG. Mr. Kim then introduced the performance and advantages of various equipment, including DFD6860HS, DGP8761HC, DGP8761, DFL7262, DFL7362, and DFD6362/6363.

Focusing on Frontline Technologies to Foster a New and Autonomous Ecosystem

The GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit also established a dedicated forum, dubbed “Memory Industry Chain Ecosystem Forum,” for enterprises across the memory industry chain to further decode memory future trends. An array of leading companies, including Skyverse, Loongson, Like Automation Equipment, Micro-Nano (HongKong), OKN Technology, Maxwell, Attach Point Intelligent Equipment, Tytantest, Maxio, Silergy, and Heyan Technology, gathered at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit to share their insights on cutting-edge trends, industry pain points, and solutions related to wafer testing, memory packaging, aging testing, product and technology innovation, terminal applications, yield improvement, and cost reduction.

Song Zhang, Executive Vice President at Skyverse, observed in his GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit keynote that it has become the industry trend to identify defects by machines through AI decision-making, aimed at helping customers to locate defects more effectively and further enhance production yield and efficiency. Meanwhile, Shan Jiang, General Manager at Guangdong Loongson Electronic Technology, affirmed that Loongson has gained more innovative space for the industry and market through self-reliance and independence.

Simon Ye, General Manager at Like Automation Equipment, expressed that the company’s next-generation innovative technology of 2.5D/3D large-size packaging bumping is currently being validated through product development with domestic clients.

Steve Pei, CEO at Micro-Nano (Hong Kong) Technology, mentioned in his GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit presentation that as a professional manufacturer of wafer thickness measurement systems, Micro-Nano now mainly provides the SemDex M1 semi-automatic system and the SemDex A fully automatic system, with over 1,000 units installed globally, placing the company at the forefront of the industry.

Ming Zhao, General Manager at OKN Technology, observed that the company has initiated the R&D for PCIe GEN6 based on the GEN5 SSD testing system. With intense competition in the industry, OKN sees this as an opportunity to enhance its internal drive, strengthen its R&D capabilities, and foster product innovation, continuously providing better solutions for its customers.

Kuilin Jin, Vice General Manager of Sales at Maxwell Technologies, pointed out that independent R&D is crucial, while Xiaolong Ouyang, R&D VP at Attach Point Intelligent Equipment (APIE), shared his insights that APIE’s one-stop solution has achieved AI Inside applications, supporting the packaging of mature storage chips required for AI.

Aaron Xu, CTO of Tytantest, highlighted through his GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit presentation that through its efforts on forward R&D, domestic manufacturing of complete machines, and validation on self-owned production lines, Tytantest strives to achieve fully automated and self-controllable processes, enabling to develop solutions that better meet customer needs.

Huan Ren, Marketing Director at Maxio Technology, confirmed at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit that the company continues to maintain a high level of investment in research and development. Its R&D expenditures have increased from 155 million yuan in 2021 to 380 million yuan in 2023, which have already been translated into several mass-produced products.

Leo Cao, Senior Sales Director at Silergy, said that in the storage industry chain, the company possesses several advantages, including highly efficient product integration, extensive experience collaborating with top-tier clients, a wide range of product coverage, supply chain security, and global collaborative research and development.

After a day of intense intellectual exchanges at the GMIF 2024 Innovation Summit, the guests gathered for a grand dinner where the GMIF 2024 Annual Awards were presented.