Hot Chips 2026: Applying High Bandwidth Flash (HBF)

HBF, or High Bandwidth Flash, uses the same flash memory technology we see in SSDs today. Unlike SSDs, HBF is implemented much like HBM (High Bandwidth Memory). HBF cubes sit on the same package as a compute chip, perhaps even next to HBM. HBF’s idea is to offer much higher bandwidth than HBM, while still providing decent memory bandwidth. At Hot Chips 2026 tutorials day, Anurag Agarwal and Radhakrishna Giduthuri’s talk explores how HBF could apply to machine learning workloads. No HBF products exist yet, so the talk focuses on simulations, projections, and how software can adapt to take advantage of HBF.HBF offers very high capacity per “cube”, and giant access granularityEven though HBF uses a HBF-like form factor, it’s completely different under the hood. It’s not like Intel’s Optane, which could function as another pool of memory. Instead, HBF is almost like a SSD integrated onto a processor. Software uses DMA to move data between HBF and DRAM. HBF accesses must be done in large,…