TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — SK Hynix and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) have joined forces to develop advanced chips for artificial intelligence.

SK Hynix said Friday (April 19) it inked a deal with TSMC to make next-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which are required for generative AI computing, Nikkei Asia reported. SK Hynix’s experience in HBM production and TSMC’s expertise in advanced packaging technology help incorporate HBM chips with graphic processing units seamlessly.

"We expect a strong partnership with TSMC to help accelerate our efforts for open collaboration with our customers and develop the industry's best-performing HBM4," SK Hynix's AI Infra Division President Justin Kim said. "With this cooperation in place, we will strengthen our market leadership as the total AI memory provider further by beefing up competitiveness in the space of the custom memory platform," he said.

The South Korean company is the world's second-largest memory chip producer and the world's sixth-largest semiconductor manufacturer.

PricewaterhouseCoopers High Tech Industry Research Center Director Allen Cheng said, “It's a smart move for SK Hynix to deepen collaboration with TSMC as TSMC has almost all the key customers working on the most advanced AI chips.” He added that “securing a further partnership means it could gain more clients using the company's HBM.”