HBM 正在「ASIC 化」？Micron 想改變的，是記憶體的商業模式
從 HBM4E、Custom HBM、single/dual sourcing 到 Rambus，AI 記憶體如何從 $/bit 商品競爭，走向 design win 與共同工程。
原文：
CBO of MU, Sumit Sadana at today’s Technology Leadership Forum
“When we talk about HBM, as you know, we have a hugely differentiated HBM3E product that continues to be in high volume production. HBM4, very robust capability, which we announced some milestones at the time of our last earnings. HBM4E is when there is going to be a custom SKU of HBM as we work with customers on, and there is plenty of opportunity for differentiation in HBM. The one thing that may not be very well understood on HBM is, even beyond the custom opportunities that start with HBM4E and continue with future generations of HBM, there is also this phenomena where the whole core design and qualification of HBM is such a time-consuming, R&D-intensive, and expensive process that it is not practical for our customers to be able to do business with all three HBM suppliers for all projects.
Consequently, many projects and platforms and several customers are going to just end up using one or two HBM suppliers, and a very small number of customers will end up using all three HBM suppliers. HBM, whether it is on a platform basis or on a customer basis, we see is going to become a two-supplier market, and oftentimes, just a single-sourced opportunity. It is not just true for HBM. Like I said earlier, since memory is such a critical asset now, there is this significant push to create differentiation using memory across a range of opportunities. I gave the LPDDR6 example for data center, but there is now a proliferation of opportunities to create differentiation in other end markets as well.
We see those opportunities again as being either single-sourced or dual-sourced for a long period of time because it is not easy for our customers to do that kind of co-engineering work with three different companies. They typically will do it with one, then maybe bring in another. We think that the market is going to become very much like an ASIC-like market more and more, and we see that more and more of our portfolio over time is going to migrate to those sort of capabilities, which is incredibly powerful from an ROI perspective long term.”
大叔最近看到Micron CBO Sumit Sadana在8月10日技術領導力論壇上的談話。如果把他的重點拆開來看，我們應該注意的是HBM的design win正在變得更值錢。過去記憶體產業最核心的競爭，是誰能用最低成本生產最多bit。到了HBM4E與Custom HBM，競爭開始往另一個方向延伸：
誰能更早參與客戶架構設計、
誰的base die整合更好、
誰的功耗與頻寬更有優勢、
誰的封裝良率更穩、
誰能提供更可靠的長期供應。
這會讓高階HBM愈來愈不像傳統Commodity DRAM。但還是要提醒各位，Micron還是記憶體公司。它依然需要Fab、設備、折舊、庫存與巨額CapEx，也依然會受到供需週期影響。所以被市場重新定價的是Micron能不能從純Commodity Memory，逐步變成擁有更高Differentiated Memory占比、更長Design Cycle與更高Through-cycle Margin的記憶體公司。
