'Gganbu Alliance' Shaken... Will Samsung and SK Hynix Face Disruptions in HBM Supply? - SBS 뉴스

The "Gganbu Alliance" fracture is a structural signal: HBM is transitioning from dual-oligopoly coordination to multipolar competition. Technically, the HBM3E-to-HBM4 transition demands joint TSV stacking and hybrid bonding optimization. If Samsung and SK Hynix decouple, NVIDIA and AMD face compounded yield and delivery uncertainty at TSMC's CoWoS packaging (Taiwan, China)—the bottleneck shifts from insufficient capacity to ecosystem fragmentation. On compliance, US BIS export controls on advanced memory have already created a two-tier market; Korean internal disunity erodes their collective bargaining leverage against US customers while buying CXMT and other Chinese DRAM players time to influence HBM4 standardization. Strategically, Micron is the most direct beneficiary: with HBM3E already in NVIDIA's qualification pipeline, a fractured Korean front hands Micron pricing leverage in the 2025–2026 HBM4 window. Over the next 12–24 months, HBM4 custom designs will fork along NVIDIA-optimized, AMD-optimized, and ASIC-custom tracks, eliminating the fungibility premium the old alliance provided. This is not a partnership breakdown—it is the prelude to an industry power redistribution.