South Korea’s memory chip exports to Taiwan rose more than 225 percent in the first half compared to a year earlier thanks to a jump in demand for high-performance high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for artificial intelligence (AI).
This is reported by Yonhap with reference to data from the South Korean Ministry of Industry.
Expressed exports of memory chips to Taiwan reached $4.26 billion in the first six months, up 225% from a year ago and far outpacing the overall 88.7% increase in exports of these semiconductors from South Korea.
Taiwan became the third largest importer of South Korean chips in January-June, moving up two places and ahead of Vietnam and the United States.
Surge in sales to Taiwan is attributed to the supply of HBM chips by Korean manufacturer SK hynix to US artificial intelligence GPU maker Nvidia, which packages its AI accelerators at Taiwan's TSMC plant. SK hynix is the only South Korean company that supplies Nvidia with HBM products, a key component of AI accelerators.
Last month, SK hynix reported in a financial report that HBM sales grew by more than 250% year-over-year, noting , which at the end of the year expects a 300 percent increase in revenue from HBM compared to 2023.