South Korea's chip giant SK Hynix has made a foray into a new type of chips – the kind that's crunchy and is edible.
Packing 385 calories a bag, the company's new "HBM chips" snack is a nod to its top-selling high-bandwidth memory semiconductors, in great demand to power AI systems.
But in this case, the acronym stands for Honey Banana Mat – Korean for "flavor."
The "semiconductor-shaped" chips are an "initiative to bring semiconductors closer to everyday life and make the public feel more familiar with them," an SK hynix official told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Thursday.
The supplier to U.S. giant Nvidia made the world's first HBM semiconductors in 2013, and remains one of the biggest manufacturers of the product.
The group, which described its latest offering as "a blend of technological form and sensory flavor," said the snack is a collaboration with 7-Eleven, which began selling them in its convenience stores this week.
Rival Samsung Electronics had also ventured into quirky food items that generated buzz, with a limited-edition "QD Ramen" in 2022 to mark its quantum-dot OLED panels.
However, the QD Ramen was only handed out to employees and not sold in stores.
