SK hynix projects AI infrastructure performance to grow 20-fold by 2030
SK hynix expects the performance scale of AI infrastructure to grow about 20-fold by 2030 as AI inference demand rises, an executive said at SEDEX 2026 in Seoul.
Ahn Hyun, head of development at the South Korean chip giant, made the projection in a keynote speech at the 2026 Semiconductor Exhibition (SEDEX), which opened earlier in the day for a three-day run in southern Seoul, according to Yonhap News.
Ahn said the AI inference market is expanding simultaneously in three areas: task complexity, the amount of information processed at a time, and the volume of inference requests. He said the interaction of the three factors is rapidly increasing demand for AI infrastructure.
As demand for AI inference surges, Ahn said memory is becoming increasingly important for storing and transferring large volumes of data. In particular, the growing capacity requirements of key-value caches, which store and reuse information previously processed by AI models, are requiring data to be distributed across different types of memory, including high-bandwidth memory, dynamic random-access memory and solid-state drives.
SK hynix is pursuing next-generation memory technologies, including 3D stacked DRAM and high-bandwidth flash, while continuing to enhance the performance of existing HBM products, Ahn added.
Editor's Summary
SK hynix expects AI infrastructure performance to expand about 20-fold by 2030, citing growing AI inference demand across task complexity, data volume and request volume. The company says memory, including HBM, DRAM and SSDs, will need to handle larger key-value caches, and it is developing 3D stacked DRAM and high-bandwidth flash while improving existing HBM.