Chinese semiconductor thread II

[sunnymaxi]

Few people discuss South Korean dominance because DRAM and NAND are commoditized, low-margin, cyclical, niche items. Intel famously abandoned DRAM and focused on higher-margin microprocessors when Japanese began "dumping" DRAM in the 1980's. South Korea simply beat the Japanese at their own DRAM game, and China is going to eat South Korea's lunch in similar fashion.

SK Hynix's 40% total DRAM produced in Wuxi city and Dalian plant making about 20% of its total NAND flash output.

Samsung has too massive flash memory production in Xi'an, China, which is responsible for roughly 40% of its global NAND flash output.

now add CXMT and YMTC production too.

so technically China is the undisputed second largest memory producer in the world just right behind Korea and catching up fast for number one position if we add all production of mainland.

 

[Matcher6130]

SK Hynix's 40% total DRAM produced in Wuxi city and Dalian plant making about 20% of its total NAND flash output.

Samsung has too massive flash memory production in Xi'an, China, which is responsible for roughly 40% of its global NAND flash output.

now add CXMT and YMTC production too.

so technically China is the undisputed second largest memory producer in the world just right behind Korea and catching up fast for number one position if we add all production of mainland.

I've been thinking, Sam Altman may have unintentionally delivered a crippling blow, if not outright death sentence, for US DRAM companies long-term.

Right now, Korea produces over

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. If China's industry matches their capacity it could potentially halve US and Japanese market shares to a paltry 15%. The Koreans were badly burned by the 2016-2017 DRAM shortage by overspending on fab expansion and upgrades. All signs point to them staying put this time and just enjoying the cash infusion. Meanwhile CXMT and YMTC have hinted that Altman's shortage has expanded and/or accellerated existing plans. If taken at face value.

WD and Kioxia (formerly Toshiba) were

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due to pressure from Korean DRAM dominance. If the Koreans stay the course despite the cash infusion, and China doesn't, we could be entering a future where the American and Japanese DRAM industries will struggle to survive.

While this probalby would've happened anyways, I believe Altman sped up the timeline and grew the scale to the point where Micron and WB might not exist in a decade. Keep in mind Wolfspeed was one the undisputed giant of SiC fabbing, and now they're bankrupt.

 

[tphuang]

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Well, things are going to get even worse for consumers as Samsung is getting out of SSD market. Let's hope these Chinese producers can quickly ramp up their production.

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remember that YMTC is building its third fab, expected to use most if not all domestic equipment. This is entering production in 2027.

 

[tphuang]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2000177035503972859

we got a new all domestic PC using K9000X CPU (8 physical and 12 logical cores at 2.4 GHz) and 8532MT/s LPDDR5X DRAM

 

[tphuang]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2000145283515392070

Aside from getting the wrong year for when N+2 risk production year wrong, rest of it seems accurate enough. Density level for N+3 is a little better than N6 & 6LPP, but a little worse than 5LPE. If they are able to make one more moderate improvement (smaller than from N+2 to N+3, like more in the 5% shrink on both side), then they will be a true 5nm process.

 

[Wahid145]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/2000145283515392070

Aside from getting the wrong year for when N+2 risk production year wrong, rest of it seems accurate enough. Density level for N+3 is a little better than N6 & 6LPP, but a little worse than 5LPE. If they are able to make one more moderate improvement (smaller than from N+2 to N+3, like more in the 5% shrink on both side), then they will be a true 5nm process.

We are all well aware of the EUVL restriction and the remarkable progress SMIC/Huawei is making in terms of cramping as much transistors using DUVL.
But lets take a moment to tinker with the fact that, here we are debating with Kirin9030 being 100 or 130 MTr/mm2 and we have TSMC shipping right now chips with a Transistor density of 224 MTr/mm2 and prepping to ship 300+ MTr/mm2 chip by next year.

China has a long catch up to do! Hopefully with EUVL breakthrough in next two years they will (out of nowhere) race ahead just like they are doing in NAND and DRAM and other fields like EV, Photovoltaics etc

 

[spaceship9876]

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Well, things are going to get even worse for consumers as Samsung is getting out of SSD market. Let's hope these Chinese producers can quickly ramp up their production.

Samsung is only getting out of the SATA SSD market not the Nvme SSD market.

 

[In4ser]

Too niche of a success, too many reliances and overall national weaknesses for it to really be called a success story. And I say this with no hatred or bias against them at all; my best friend is Korean and I almost married Korean. But that country made far too many critical compromises for a very narrow scope of success.

You act like Korea had the opportunity to do so, it’s a smaller country with a limited population. While a smaller size allows you to be more agile, the barrier of entry for most high margin industries is high and there’s a limited domestic market. That’s why you have to specialize, you cannot succeed everywhere because of weaker fundamentals in size and scale. Only by doubling down in a few key area, can you hope to create enough of advantage to be dominant.

This is why Singapore focuses on Finance or Taiwan has Semiconductors. At most, South Korea could hope for is be self-sufficient like North Korea.

Despite being similar animals, a cat will never defeat a tiger head on regardless of how disciplined, talented or intelligent it is. However, it can outcompete it when hunting small birds and rodents.

 

[Michael90]

Too niche of a success, too many reliances and overall national weaknesses for it to really be called a success story. And I say this with no hatred or bias against them at all; my best friend is Korean and I almost married Korean. But that country made far too many critical compromises for a very narrow scope of success.

I disagree. A country of barely 50million people(that's over 25 times smaller than China. Lol ) with a small landmass and barely any natural resources (unlike the US, China, Russia etc) can't be expected to be dominate and present in all sectors, that's not realistic. It's like expecting a province in china to dominate in every field. Korea for its size and it's little resources has far excelled above their size/weight by a large margin. I can hardly think of other countries of their size who has done better to be honest, very very few if any. It's funny that even in Shipbuilding they are the ones giants like US and India are calling for help in building their ship industry. Same in electronics/auto industry/semi conductors/steel/entertainment industies etc were they are also present. They have done far better than most countries their size. You can't expect more than that from them. They fact that they even dominate critical fields in which countries who are far larger, and with more resources than them compete in is a miracle actually .

 

[Michael90]

SK Hynix's 40% total DRAM produced in Wuxi city and Dalian plant making about 20% of its total NAND flash output.

Samsung has too massive flash memory production in Xi'an, China, which is responsible for roughly 40% of its global NAND flash output.

now add CXMT and YMTC production too.

so technically China is the undisputed second largest memory producer in the world just right behind Korea and catching up fast for number one position if we add all production of mainland.

Yes, but those are not Chinese companies . It's like Hyundai now looking to produce ships in India to lower cost and better compete with china, doesn't means India owns Hyundai (of course they also get benefits like employment, taxes, and sourcing of parts from local suppliers) but the real high value chain and profits are still with the mother company headquarters. Same with apple production in China, Vietnam, India . Doesn't means these countries own apple or their products . So i will count more on real Chinese companies like YMTC and CXMT not foreign companies setting up production facilities in China.