▲ Visitors look around the Samsung Electronics booth at 'FMS 2026', which opened at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California, U.S., on the 4th (local time).
More than 100 companies set up booths at the memory event 'FMS 2026', which opened at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California, U.S., on the 4th (local time), but the undisputed stars were Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.
The Samsung Electronics exhibition hall, which is also an official sponsor of FMS 2026, was packed with visitors eager to see new memory architectures such as zHBM and zNAND-O unveiled on this day.
Although no commercial products have been produced yet and only dummy models were on display, visitors were busy capturing the new product models on their smartphones, taking multiple photos from different angles.
Visitors from all over the world, appearing to be clients, partners, and analysts, toured the booth in pairs or groups of three, discussing the new memories with each other, exchanging explanations, and asking staff members questions.
An official from Samsung Electronics said, "Industry insiders and customers showed the greatest interest in zHBM and zNAND-O, which Samsung Electronics introduced to the industry for the first time," adding, "There were the most questions regarding the commercialization timeline and technology implementation methods."
Crowds also flocked to the SK hynix exhibition hall.
The place where visitors lingered the most was the display stand for the memory pooling application product 'CXL Memory Module' (CMM), which SK hynix presented during its keynote address as one of the ways to break through the 'memory wall'.
People who appeared to be engineers closely examined the actual modules and showered staff with questions about the effects of memory pooling and required costs.
However, some visitors expressed disappointment as products or models related to the High Bandwidth NAND flash (HBF) standard announced by SK hynix at this event were not exhibited on-site.
An SK hynix staff member on-site explained, "HBF is a product whose standard has just been announced, and it is in the pre-stage of commercialization and physical hardware development, making exhibition difficult."
Aside from advanced memory technologies, unique experiential zones prepared by both companies also drew visitors to their booths.
Samsung Electronics held an event where visitors could take a picture in front of a robot dressed in a semiconductor manufacturing cleanroom suit, which instantly printed out a cartoonized version featuring the Golden Gate Bridge, a landmark of nearby San Francisco, in the background.
There were also many people looking to play a video game created by SK hynix that mimics the DRAM stacking structure of HBM.
As the status of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix in the AI semiconductor market grew, the FMS 2026 venue itself was busier compared to previous years.
The organizers stated that the number of attendees this year increased from around 3,000 in previous years to over 3,500, and the number of exhibiting companies expanded from around 70 to over 100.
FMS originally started as the 'Flash Memory Summit', but starting two years ago, it has been held under the name 'Future of Memory and Storage', encompassing memory and storage devices overall.
(Photo: Yonhap News)
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