New $Sandisk(SNDK.US) HBF Patent:
Analysis in plain English (hopefully):The patent is about training models, which flash is supposedly bad at. The reason they could file it is that they found the loophole where it doesn't cover full training. Rather, it covers fine-tuning via a method called LoRA which keeps almost everything static. Instead of retraining the whole model, you freeze it & train only a tiny add-on bolted to the side. The frozen part never changes during the process.Sandisk's insight is if the big part never changes, you don't need expensive memory to hold it....you just need to read it, over and over again.And reading is the one thing that cheap flash is perfectly fine at.So the patent parks the frozen giant model on cheap flash + keeps only the tiny changing part on the expensive fast memory.Quite elegant imo since it doesn't try to fix flash's weakness. It just makes it irrelevant.Imo the accurate way to frame this patent is that it widens HBF's tam from pure inference into training.And the encouraging thing for Sandisk is that the programme behind this looks real rather than theoretical e.g. partnership w/ SK hynix to turn hbf into the industry standard.Ofc, patents aren't revenue. What'll actually matter is qualification/shipments. I.e. roadmaps. From my understanding though, first hbf chips sample later this yr w/ first products using them arriving some time in 2027. ---Patent number: US 2025/0390733 A1
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