Chinese memory chips manufacturers are a nightmare for the US and South Korea. There is a lot at play

Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC) is one of the largest memory chips manufacturers in China. Its quota in the global market is approximately 6%so it is far from South Korean companies Samsung and SK Hynix, and also from the American Micron Technology, the three companies that lead this sector. Even so, Its weight in the Chinese market is very largeespecially because US sanctions They prevent American and South Korean memories manufacturers selling their most sophisticated integrated circuits to their Chinese clients.

YMTC is in the spotlight of the US administration for more than two years. In fact, at the end of 2022 the Department of Commerce led by Gina Raimondo He decided to include this company in his blacklist because he had managed to develop an ambitious 128 layer memory chip. Currently YMTC is one of the companies that have the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing technology in China, and curiously, According to Techinsights He has reached this position without resorting to foreign technology. Not even Asml’s.

YMTC aspires to intimidate the leaders of the memory chips market

This achievement seems to have been possible because YMTC has the complicity of three of the most important Chinese lithography equipment: Naura Technology, Amec (Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. China) and Piotech Inc. The most shocking thing is that according to Techinsight analysts, which is a Canadian communication platform intimately linked to the semiconductor industry and with Great credibilityYMTC has managed to put avant -garde memory chips capable of rivaling the most advanced foreign solutions.

And it has managed to refine its technology of stacking of memory cells in layers known as ‘xtacking’ until reaching a level of performance in its integrated nand type circuits similar to that of the comparable memories of Samsung or SK Hynix. However, this is not all. According to SCMPYMTC has recently published about 20 new patents in which it describes processes that seek to increase efficiency and optimize chips stacking structures. It is evident that the development of the technological capacity of Chinese manufacturers of integrated memory circuits represents a threat to Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron Technology.

However, YMTC is not the only Chinese company with the ability to put in trouble the manufacturers of South Korean and American memory chips. Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is one of the Chinese companies specialized in the production of memory chips, and, like other companies in the country led by Xi Jinping, it has chosen to compete in this market so attractive deploying a very aggressive pricing policy. CXMT in particular has increased its production capacity of DRAM chips almost five times during the last four years, which has allowed it to increase its global market share until it reaches a very worthy 9%.

This growth has placed this company just behind Micron Technology if we stick to its market share, so it is already the fourth largest memory chips manufacturer on the planet. To curl the curl even more The Chinese government is supporting economically to its manufacturers of this type of semiconductors in response to the sanctions deployed by the US and its allies, so the competitiveness of Chinese companies is upwards.

More information | SCMP

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