While Samsung has been trying to gain a foothold in the HBM market, it hasn’t been able to pass Nvidia’s qualification test for its HBM3E chips, a key evaluation to determine the quality of its solutions. Earlier reports suggested that test results would be out in mid-May 2025, but it now appears the company has faced another setback. The latest reports from Korea say the evaluation has been postponed until June 2025.
Samsung struggles to improve its HBM3E solution, still pending Nvidia approval
For the past several months, Samsung has been desperately trying to get approval from NVIDIA for its 12-layer HBM3E chips. But it continues to face delays due to the chip’s performance issues, heat generation, power consumption, and more. In March 2025, Samsung underwent a redesign of its chips and is now waiting for the quality test results.
Recently, Korean outlet TheElec reports that Samsung has achieved the minimum requirements in the audit of NVIDIA’s Onyang Campus conducted in March 2025. “After the audit, there are high expectations internally for passing the final quality test,’ and “We are putting everything into our business, targeting June of this year,” an industry insider told the publication.
Samsung’s Onyang Campus is a key site for packaging and testing semiconductors such as DRAM, NAND flash, and CMOS image sensors (CIS). Before these chips pass the quality check, they go through an audit to inspect their electrical and physical features as well as test reliability, such as heat generation and lifespan.
As of now, Samsung’s rival SK Hynix and Micron are the key suppliers of HBM3E products for NVIDIA. Since Samsung has not yet been able to secure NVIDIA’s order, it has lost share heavily in the growing HBM market.
Samsung aims to get back on track with its HBM4 solutions
Meanwhile, Samsung is optimistic that it will bounce back to this space with its 6th-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) solutions. Previously, Vice Chairman Jeon said, “We plan to quickly supply HBM3E 12-layer products to the market and actively respond to customer demand in the next-generation product, HBM4.”
We will have to wait and see if Samsung can pass NVIDIA’s qualification test in June. But since it recently lost Google as a customer for its HBM3E chips, industry analysts expect its qualification chances to be low. Google reportedly discarded Samsung’s redesigned HBM3E 12Hi solution due to various issues, so it’s looking worse for the Korean firm. We shall find out soon.
