Yangtze Memory (YMTC), China’s largest memory semiconductor company, is promoting advanced semiconductor production using Chinese equipment to respond to US sanctions, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported citing multiple sources.
According to this, YMTC is promoting a secret project called ‘Wudangsan’, and it is promoting ‘Xstacking 3.0’ NAND flash manufacturing in cooperation with Chinese equipment makers. Wudang Mountain is the name of a mountain in Hubei Province where YTMC headquarters is located.
Sources said that YMTC placed large-scale orders with Beifang Huachang, which manufactures etching equipment. It also added that it requested that the supplied equipment not be marked with logos and other identification marks to avoid the risk of US sanctions.
Previously, in October of last year, the U.S. authorities introduced export control measures to ban the export of semiconductor equipment against Chinese companies that make DRAMs under 18 nanometers (nm), NAND flashes with 128 layers or more, and logic chips under 14 nm. In December of the same year, 36 Chinese companies, including YMTC, were listed on the export control list.
Although it was observed that the Chinese semiconductor industry would be under strong pressure due to US pressure, YMTC was diagnosed as making technological progress in the 3D NAND flash sector. In November of last year, TechInsight, a Canadian semiconductor consulting firm, reported that YMTC pushed out Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to produce 3D NAND flash with more than 200 layers for the first time in the world.
SCMP diagnosed that the Chinese government’s large-scale semiconductor investment and the improvement of the Chinese economy following the easing of the Corona 19 quarantine may have made YMTC’s policy to push forward with the mass production of 232-layer NAND flash. YMTC is said to have attracted an investment of $7 billion (approximately 9.3 trillion won) from Chinese state investors.
Source: Donga
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