Intel Foundry may secure a contract to manufacture base dies for SK hynix's upcoming HBM4E memory, diversifying the South Korean company's supply chain beyond TSMC. Reportedly, SK hynix is evaluating a dual-sourcing strategy involving both TSMC and Intel, with Intel Foundry potentially winning a significant portion of the order. This shift allows customers to integrate custom logic, such as memory controllers and PHYs, directly onto the HBM4E base die.

By offloading these components, SK hynix can free up valuable space on the main compute tile for additional processing units, thereby reducing latency and improving overall performance in AI accelerators. While the specific Intel process node remains under discussion, options including Intel 10, Intel 4/3, and the upcoming Intel 18A are being weighed. Notably, using a more mature node like Intel 3 or Intel 4 makes financial sense given the already high costs of HBM technology.

Furthermore, SK hynix has already validated its designs to work with Intel's EMIB-T technology, which enables vertical power delivery across stacked chips, supporting the company's vision for 3D memory modules at the package level. This development marks a significant step toward more flexible and efficient high-bandwidth memory architectures.