SK Hynix collaborates with SanDisk to launch a new storage standard, ushering in a new catalyst for AI storage trading BlockBeats news, on August 4th, according to a press release PDF released by SK Hynix Press Room on August 4th, SK Hynix and SanDisk released the first standard specification for HBF (High Bandwidth Flash) through OCP and showcased related AI memory solutions at FMS 2026 held in Santa Clara, California, USA. HBF is positioned as a new storage layer between HBM and SSD. According to SK Hynix, HBF hopes to use NAND technology to provide greater capacity while achieving high-speed data transmission capabilities close to HBM, in order to cope with the "memory wall" brought about by AI inference expansion. The first version of the standard covers a maximum capacity of 512GB and is based on 8-layer and 16 layer NAND die stacking. The bandwidth is divided into three levels, ranging from approximately 0.4TB/s to 3.0TB/s. Using UCIe for interconnection means that in the future, it can be more flexibly integrated with processors such as GPUs and CPUs. This release coincides with a significant fluctuation in the memory stock market. In July, AI storage trading sharply cooled down. Barron's reported that SanDisk and Micron fell by about 47% and 29% respectively, and the Roundhill Memory ETF fell by about 32%. But after entering August, the sentiment of chip stocks began to recover, with the PHLX semiconductor index rising more than 1% on Monday, Nvidia rising nearly 3%, and Micron and SanDisk also rebounding. The market is concerned about overheating valuations in the early stages, while continuing to search for evidence that the demand for AI infrastructure has not cooled down. From this perspective, the significance of the HBF standard is not just a new product release. It points to the next stage of AI infrastructure: computing power clusters are no longer just competing for GPU numbers, and memory bandwidth, capacity, energy consumption, and data handling efficiency will also become system performance bottlenecks. SK Hynix and SanDisk's decision to disclose standards through OCP is also an effort to push HBF into an open ecosystem rather than a single vendor specification. Google and Tenstorrent have already joined the HBF alliance, and SK Hynix will also discuss with Google DeepMind and SanDisk during the FMS on how to use HBF to overcome memory bottlenecks. The press release also revealed that SK Hynix has publicly showcased its tenth generation 375 layer 4D NAND wafer and products for the first time, stating that its performance per watt has increased by 2.5 times compared to the previous generation, and plans to mass produce high-performance, high-capacity eSSD based on this technology early next year. These enterprise grade SSDs, NAND price increases, and AI data center storage demands, which have been repeatedly priced by traders recently, are all new fundamental materials.