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"The Next Bottleneck After HBM Is HBF"... A Computing Pioneer's Prediction "I have been consistently paying close attention to High Bandwidth Flash (HBF). I'm also collaborating with semiconductor companies on this. HBF is highly likely to stand at the center of the next bottleneck — a surge in demand." David Patterson, professor at UC Berkeley, Turing Award laureate, and widely recognized as the architect of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing — an approach that simplifies instructions to improve processing efficiency), made these remarks on April 30 (local time) when he met with reporters in San Francisco immediately after delivering a keynote at the Dreamy Next event. Asked about what comes after HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), which is currently in a supply-constrained bottleneck, Professor Patterson answered that HBF will emerge as the next focus. Specifically, he said, "Although a number of technical challenges still remain, the HBF being developed by companies such as SK hynix and SanDisk is a meaningful alternative in that it can deliver large capacity with low power consumption," adding, "Going forward, how efficiently data can be stored and delivered will become the critical variable." This past March, SK hynix announced that it had joined hands with U.S. flash memory company SanDisk to drive the global standardization of HBF. Unlike HBM, which stacks DRAM, HBF is built by stacking NAND flash — a non-volatile memory. Their roles are also distinct. While HBM serves as a fast computation aid, HBF is focused on storing the vast amounts of data that AI processes at high capacity. HBF is drawing attention as the AI inference market grows. The AI market is broadly divided into learning (training) and inference. Training is the process of feeding massive amounts of data to teach an AI model. Inference is the stage in which results are derived based on the trained data. In inference AI, the ability to continuously store and retrieve vast amounts of intermediate data — such as prior conversations, judgment outcomes, and task context — is crucial. This is because AI carries out reasoning by remembering context and building upon it. The problem is that all of this data is difficult to fit into HBM. Since HBM is optimized for handling data used immediately, its capacity itself is inherently limited. Moreover, given its high price, processing the enormous amounts of context data generated during inference using HBM alone would impose significant cost burdens. As a result, an environment has formed in which both HBM and HBF are needed simultaneously — a kind of division of labor. Domestic experts in Korea also anticipate that the importance of HBF will grow going forward. At an HBF research and technology development strategy briefing held this past February, Kim Jung-ho, professor in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at KAIST, stated, "If the central processing unit (CPU) was the core in the PC era and low-power technology was the core in the smartphone era, memory will be the core of the AI era," adding, "What determines speed is HBM, and what determines capacity is HBF." He further predicted, "From 2038 onward, demand for HBF will surpass that of HBM."

$LPK LPKF Laser broke out the symmetric wedge. This wedge was formed yesterday by establishing a higher low. Price target of the pattern is roughly 21€. It is getting unlikely to see the 12.x€ at this point unless the earrings gonna be really bad. If we close the week above 17€ I see an approach of 28€ as realistic.

$LPK Alright, immediate big update, you can now hover over (most of) the arrows and click on them to see the source URL (usually Korean reporting) for the particular connection

Intel just dropped Q1 earnings. Beat on everything. But the CFO flagged T-glass and glass substrates as rising input costs hitting H2 margins. You don’t mention something on an earnings call unless it’s moving your P&L. Intel is buying glass substrates at scale. $LPK $LPKF reports in 6 days

It's pretty interesting that the whole glass substrate supercycle essentially hinges on $LPK/ $LPKFF –a <€200M market cap company from Germany Glass is hitting an inflection point and the supply-chain is gearing up. Intel spent $1B+ on it. Samsung is sampling Apple. Absolics built a $600M fab in Georgia. LG Innotek is building pilot lines. Corning, AGC, SCHOTT are all supplying the glass Capex is ramping and glass looks imminent (it is) to become the base material for the next generation of leading edge semi packaging–however if you dive deeper down the rabbit hole, you’ll quickly notice that glass substrates are useless without Through-Glass-Vias, tiny microscopic holes that carry electrical signals through the glass. No TGVs, no glass substrate, no party. It's literally just a piece of overengineered glass without them That leads us to $LPK. Let me give you the surface level overview of the thesis: TGV is hard. Glass is brittle. Traditional drilling can leave micro-cracks, rough edges and stress on the glass. This can hurt reliability and lower yield which directly leads to reduced margins $LPK does things a little different. They invented a two step process which uses a laser to modify the internal structure of the glass–then a wet chemical etching process which dissolves the modified regions. No micro-cracks, defect-free holes and sub-micron precision. This process is called LIDE (Laser-Induced Deep Etching) and is currently being adopted by ~80% of the glass substrate market for their qualifications Here is the overview: - $INTC: glass substrate packaging for 18A/14A, Clearwater Forest - Samsung Electro-Mechanics: sampling Apple and Broadcom, 2027 mass production - Absolics: first CHIPS Act recipient for glass, ramping production in Georgia - $011070/LG Innotek: pilot line, partnered with UTI, targeting 2028 - $GLW: supplying substrate-grade glass compositions - AGC, SCHOTT, Nippon Electric Glass: same All of these companies are betting their next-gen packaging roadmaps on glass. $LPK holds 80% market share in qualification with a long-term goal of maintaining 70% market share once HVM starts. Based on the list above, I'll let you take a guess who will, and won't depend on $LPK moving forward