Seoul: Samsung Electronics Co. will begin mass production of the world's first sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory, known as HBM4, later this month, industry sources said Sunday.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the South Korean tech giant plans to start shipping HBM4 chips as early as next week, following the Lunar New Year holiday, for use in graphics processing units (GPUs) made by Nvidia Corp. Nvidia's GPUs are widely used in generative artificial intelligence systems.

"Samsung, which has the world's largest production capacity and the broadest product lineup, has demonstrated a recovery in its technological competitiveness by becoming the first to mass-produce the highest-performing HBM4," said an industry source, who declined to be named.

The global HBM market is currently dominated by fifth-generation HBM3E chips, but industry observers expect HBM4 to emerge as a key technology. Nvidia plans to adopt HBM4 in its next-generation AI accelerator, named Vera Rubin.

Samsung has passed Nvidia's quality certification process and secured purchase orders, the sources said, noting that the production schedule was finalized to align with Nvidia's launch plans for Vera Rubin. The volume of HBM4 samples supplied by Samsung for customer-side module testing has also increased significantly under the latest purchase order, the sources added.