SK Hynix and SanDisk to Release First High Bandwidth Flash Standard at FMS 2026
SK Hynix and SanDisk, under the Open Compute Project (OCP), will release the first open standard specification for High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) at the FMS 2026 conference. This specification defines capacity configurations up to 512GB using 8-layer and 16-layer NAND stacks, with bandwidths ranging from 0.4TB/s to 3.0TB/s. HBF introduces a new storage tier bridging the gap between high-speed HBM and high-capacity SSDs, which is crucial for handling massive AI inference workloads. By establishing an open standard via OCP and using UCIe interconnects, it enables broad industry adoption and interoperability across different processors. The standard utilizes Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) to connect HBF directly to CPUs and GPUs. Additionally, the HBF alliance already includes major industry players like Google and Tenstorrent to accelerate ecosystem adoption.
## BACKGROUND
High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) offers extreme speeds but is limited in capacity and high in cost, while Solid State Drives (SSDs) offer massive capacity but slower speeds. Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) is an open industry standard for high-bandwidth, low-latency die-to-die communication within a single chip package.