The new High Bandwidth Flash specification, disclosed through OCP, targets AI infrastructure bottlenecks as Google and Tenstorrent join the consortium and SK hynix debuts its 375-layer 4D NAND.
SK hynix said it has worked with Sandisk to publish the first standard specifications for High Bandwidth Flash, or HBF, a next-generation storage technology designed to sit between HBM and SSDs in AI systems. The release comes about six months after the HBF consortium was launched in February and follows an initial standardization partnership with Sandisk in August 2025. SK hynix said the specification supports capacities of up to 512GB using 8-high and 16-high NAND die stacks, with three bandwidth grades ranging from about 0.4TB/s to 3.0TB/s. The company said HBF uses UCIe (open chiplet interconnect standard) to link with processors such as GPUs and CPUs, and that the specification was disclosed through the Open Compute Project, positioning it as an open industry standard rather than a proprietary technology. At FMS 2026 in Santa Clara, California, SK hynix plans to promote HBF as a way to address AI-era memory bottlenecks through keynote speeches and a panel discussion with Sandisk and Google DeepMind. The company is also using the event to publicly show its tenth-generation 375-layer 4D NAND for the first time, saying the technology delivers 2.5 times better power efficiency than the previous generation and will underpin high-performance, high-capacity eSSDs planned for mass production early next year.