JEDEC Releases HBM4 Standard to Advance AI and HPC Memory 

ARLINGTON, Va., April 16, 2025 -- JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in the development of standards for the microelectronics industry, today announced the publication of its highly anticipated High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) DRAM standard: HBM4.

Designed as an evolutionary step beyond the previous HBM3 standard, JESD270-4 HBM4 will further enhance data processing rates while maintaining essential features such as higher bandwidth, power efficiency, and increased capacity per die and/or stack, because the higher bandwidth enables the higher data processing rate.

The advancements introduced by HBM4 are vital for applications that require efficient handling of large datasets and complex calculations, including generative artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), high-end graphics cards, and servers. HBM4 introduces numerous improvements to the prior version of the standard, including:

• Increased Bandwidth: With transfer speeds up to 8 Gb/s across a 2048-bit interface, HBM4 boosts total bandwidth up to 2 TB/s.
• Doubled Channels: HBM4 doubles the number of independent channels per stack, from 16 channels (HBM3) to 32 channels with 2 pseudo-channels per channel. This provides designers with more flexibility and independent ways to access the cube.
• Power Efficiency: JESD270-4 supports vendor specific VDDQ (0.7V, 0.75V, 0.8V or 0.9V) and VDDC (1.0V or 1.05V) levels, resulting in lower power consumption and improved energy efficiency.
• Compatibility and Flexibility: The HBM4 interface definition ensures backwards compatibility with existing HBM3 controllers, allowing for seamless integration and flexibility in various applications and allowing a single controller to work with both HBM3 and HBM4 if needed.
• Directed Refresh Management (DRFM): HBM4 incorporates Directed Refresh Management (DRFM) for improved row-hammer mitigation and Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS).
• Capacity: HBM4 supports 4-high, 8-high, 12-high and 16-high DRAM stack configurations with 24 Gb or 32 Gb die densities, providing for a higher cube density of 64GB (32 Gb 16-High).

“High performance computing platforms are evolving rapidly and require innovation in memory bandwidth and capacity,” said Barry Wagner, Director of Technical Marketing at NVIDIA and JEDEC HBM Subcommittee Chair. “Developed in collaboration with technology industry leaders, HBM4 is designed to drive a leap forward in efficient, high performance computing for AI and other accelerated applications.”

“JEDEC members are dedicated to developing the standards needed to support the technology of the future,” said Mian Quddus, Chairman of the JEDEC Board of Directors. He added, “The HBM Subcommittee’s efforts to continuously improve the HBM standard hold the potential to drive significant advancements in a wide variety of applications.”

“The tremendous growth in AI model sizes demands higher memory bandwidth to improve the efficiency of AI hardware systems with heterogeneous compute architectures, ensuring rapid and seamless data movement at a large scale. The HBM4 standard addresses this need for higher bandwidth with significant enhancements,” said Boyd Phelps, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Silicon Solutions Group at Cadence. “Through our collaboration with JEDEC and ecosystem partners, Cadence is facilitating this transition by delivering the industry’s highest-performing HBM4 memory subsystem with the lowest power and area.”

“Memory bandwidth is one of the key pillars of performance for AI computing systems,” said Nikhil Jayaram, VP, Google Cloud Silicon. “JEDEC HBM4 represents the big step in bandwidth that Google needs for next generation training and inference systems. We look forward to the advances in AI that HBM4-based systems will enable and to collaborate with JEDEC to extend HBM into the future.”

To download JESD270-4, visit the JEDEC website here.

About JEDEC

JEDEC is the global leader in the development of standards for the microelectronics industry. Thousands of volunteers representing over 360 member companies work together in more than 100 JEDEC committees and task groups to meet the needs of every segment of the industry, for manufacturers and consumers alike. The publications and standards generated by JEDEC committees are accepted throughout the world. All JEDEC standards are available for download from the JEDEC website.

Source: JEDEC