Chinese semiconductor industry

Wangxi said:

Micron Technology disbands its DRAM design team in Shanghai and is said to prevent loss of talent to other Chinese companies

Micron Technology is disbanding its DRAM design team within its Shanghai R&D Center, JW Insights has learned on January 25.
Sources also said that Micron would help some 40 core members of the to be disbanded team immigrate to the United States with their families.

The Micron Shanghai R&D Center is said to have over 100 employees and the sales, testing, and other functions will remain unchanged. There are neither changes with Micron's factory in Xi’an for DRAM manufacturing and testing.

Micron's DRAM design team had previously lost quite a few employees to Chinese IC design companies and storage manufacturers in the last couple of years.

An industry observer commented that Micron's disbanding of its DRAM design team is likely to prevent technological leakage. Although the number of Chinese DRAM companies is relatively small, several new ones may emerge in the next few years. DRAM manufacturers are looking for talent. Micron's move may want to keep product design and R&D outside the Chinese mainland.

Micron Technology has the world’s largest DRAM market share of 41.5%, according to market research firm Counterpoint. Samsung is the second of 29.3%, SK Hynix the third of 23.4%.

Micron has a long history of attaching importance to intellectual property protection. It took UMC to court for leaking trade secrets. Still, they ended up reaching a global agreement and withdrawing their lawsuits against each other last November, with UMC paying Micron a one-time settlement of an undisclosed amount. Both parties said in their statements that they look forward to future business cooperation. At the end of the lawsuit, Micron emphasized that intellectual property protection is an essential cornerstone for its competitiveness.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

Wangxi said:

Micron Technology disbands its DRAM design team in Shanghai and is said to prevent loss of talent to other Chinese companies

Click to expand...

FairAndUnbiased said:

what a genius move. "prevent loss of talent" by disbanding their team. yes I'm sure their design team will 100% trust their employer at this point LMAO.

they still lose talent if all 40/100 take the emigration offer, and we know that isn't likely.

See, the main problem of Chinese memory companies isn't the design... it's not even really the fabrication ( DRAM mostly uses older processes).

It's the marketing, service, etc. part.

how are they gonna stop the marketing, service, test, QC, peripheral designer, process engineers, etc. from seeing a risk to their jobs?

Click to expand...

Tyler said:

Any up and coming Chinese companies that can displace micron worldwide?

Click to expand...

FairAndUnbiased said:

micron produces NAND flash memory and DRAM.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Performance: leading edge, highest memory density (GB/mm2) out of 4 top tier competitors

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Performance: not leading edge unfortunately but DRAM is a much narrower market than NAND.

Click to expand...

Wangxi said:

Micron Technology disbands its DRAM design team in Shanghai and is said to prevent loss of talent to other Chinese companies

Micron Technology is disbanding its DRAM design team within its Shanghai R&D Center, JW Insights has learned on January 25.
Sources also said that Micron would help some 40 core members of the to be disbanded team immigrate to the United States with their families.

The Micron Shanghai R&D Center is said to have over 100 employees and the sales, testing, and other functions will remain unchanged. There are neither changes with Micron's factory in Xi’an for DRAM manufacturing and testing.

Micron's DRAM design team had previously lost quite a few employees to Chinese IC design companies and storage manufacturers in the last couple of years.

An industry observer commented that Micron's disbanding of its DRAM design team is likely to prevent technological leakage. Although the number of Chinese DRAM companies is relatively small, several new ones may emerge in the next few years. DRAM manufacturers are looking for talent. Micron's move may want to keep product design and R&D outside the Chinese mainland.

Micron Technology has the world’s largest DRAM market share of 41.5%, according to market research firm Counterpoint. Samsung is the second of 29.3%, SK Hynix the third of 23.4%.

Micron has a long history of attaching importance to intellectual property protection. It took UMC to court for leaking trade secrets. Still, they ended up reaching a global agreement and withdrawing their lawsuits against each other last November, with UMC paying Micron a one-time settlement of an undisclosed amount. Both parties said in their statements that they look forward to future business cooperation. At the end of the lawsuit, Micron emphasized that intellectual property protection is an essential cornerstone for its competitiveness.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Click to expand...

manqiangrexue said:

Assuming they are Chinese, China should stop those 40 from immigrating. First by offering them new opportunities, then by having a nice chat with them to make them understand the morality of choosing a company over your nation, then by legal threat, then illegal means. Micron should be able to take none of them in the end and any Chinese person at this point who wants to help an American company beat out Chinese rivals, especially in this kind of field, deserves every bit of that justice all the way to the grave.

Click to expand...

Wangxi said:

team

Click to expand...

AndrewS said:

I don't think China needs to go that far.

Rationally, it should be obvious that they will have better pay and more opportunities for promotion in China.

Click to expand...

dfrtyhgj said:

China just need to pay more than Micron. And provide an affordable suburban environment.

Click to expand...