China’s two big DRAM potential contenders – Yangtze River Storage and Fujian Jinhua IC – are getting a local competitor.
Hefei is to put up 80% of the $2.7 billion and GigaDevice 20%.
GigaDevice, in which China’s National IC Industry Investment Fund has an 11% stake, gets priority access to the output at preferential prices.
Yangtze River, which is owned by Tsinghua Unigroup, has also had investment from the fund.
In early 2017, Hefei said it would spend $7.2 billion to build a 125k wpm 300mm fab. It is planning to move equipment into the fab in Q1.
The target for the GigaDevice/Hefei 19nm DRAM process is to have a trial run with 90% yields by the end of next year.
Fujian Jinhua, which is getting its process technology from UMC, is believed to have set a similar target,
Meanwhile it is reported that Samsung’s incoming new chip boss, Kim Ki-nam has a strategy to greet the entry of the new China DRAM contenders with a surge in capacity which will bomb prices and deny them profits. 0100名刺は切らしておりまして2018/02/19(月) 16:18:55.03ID:puCeizQn China may stick to its own DRAM memory soon – researchers NAND thanks for memory, folks... we don't need you any more By Chris Mellor 21 Dec 2017 at 12:45 https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/21/china_memory_insource/
Tsinghua Unigroup subsidiary YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Company) is focusing on 3D NAND. It will first develop low-end products such as memory cards and USB drives; its technology is not yet competitive with established global suppliers in the SSD market according to the researchers. When its layering tech reaches the 64- and 96-layer levels, it is predicted to enter the SSD market.
YMTC is building a flash fab site in the Wuhan Donghu New Technology Development Zone. Currently XMC is trialling NAND fabbing in China but it will switch to NOR Flash, leaving 3D NAND a YMTC preserve.
Innotron is building a mobile DRAM capability. The TrendForcers say this is a fiercely competitive market, focusing on low power consumption. With China brands accounting for over 40 per cent of global smartphone shipments, Innotron could thus make headway with LPDDR4 memory, helped by Chinese government subsidies and supportive policies.
JHICC is making speciality DRAM for the consumer electronics market. It is expected to increase its production facilities, again with government subsidy help, and could enter the international market next year.
This trio of indigenous DRAM and NAND suppliers would have to meet and beat international competition to succeed. If this happens in the next three to five years, then Samsung, SK Hynix, Toshiba/WDC, Micron/Intel and others will lose revenue share in these markets and face significant market share loss in China.
