Yangtze Memory, a Chinese memory chipmaker that aims to be a rival to Samsung, SK Hynix and others, will see its wafer capacity rise to 50,000 to 100,000 at the end of this year, Chinastarmarket reported today.
Currently, the company's monthly wafer production capacity is about 20,000.
Industry insiders said Yangtze Memory's 128-layer wafer will also make a breakthrough at the end of this year, but the company has not confirmed this speculation, the report said.
Later, Yangtze Memory responded that the capacity plan had been disclosed before, and the above news was not the latest. In addition, the exact mass production time of 128-layer wafers has not yet been announced.
Earlier, Yangtze Memory Vice Chairman Yang Daohong stated that it would reach a monthly capacity of 100,000 pieces of 64-layer 3D flash memory products as soon as possible and build 300,000 pieces/month capacity on schedule (Phase 2), increasing the scale effect of the national memory base.
Yang Daohong pointed out that in recent years, the National Memory Base has continued to research and develop new memory, special memory, Internet of Things chips (5G chips), and research and development of smart chip products to enhance core competitiveness.
In addition, more than 70 upstream and downstream companies and research institutes in the integrated circuit industry chain in the United Nations have led the establishment of a semiconductor 3D integrated manufacturing innovation center and the establishment of the China Semiconductor 3D Integrated Manufacturing Industry Alliance.
In the fourth quarter of 2019, the global NAND flash market revenue data, Samsung, Armor, Micron, Hynix and other foreign manufacturers accounted for more than 99%
In January 2017, the national memory base project started in Wuhan, with a total investment of 160 billion yuan. The project is jointly invested and built by the Uni-State Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund of Hubei, the Hubei Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, and Hubei Science and Technology Investment. Yangtze Memory is the main body of the project.
In the same year, Yangtze Memory successfully designed and manufactured the first batch of 3D NAND flash memory chips in China on the basis of a wholly-owned subsidiary, Wuhan Xinxin 12-inch Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Plant, through a combination of independent research and development and international cooperation.
On September 2, 2019, Yangtze Memory announced that it has started mass production of 64-layer 256 Gb TLC 3D NAND flash memory based on the Xtacking® architecture (the storage capacity of each bare chip is 256 gigabits and each storage unit is 3 digit flash memory) to meet the needs of mainstream market applications such as solid-state drives and embedded storage. This is also China's first 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory.
Cheng Weihua, co-chief technology officer of Yangtze Memory, said at the time: "By introducing the Xtacking® architecture to mass production, it can significantly improve product performance, shorten development cycles and manufacturing cycles, and thus promote the rapid development of the high-speed large-capacity storage solution market.
Yangtze Memory was established in July 2016. It is a subsidiary of Tsinghua Unigroup, a core semiconductor manufacturing company in China, and one of the sponsors of China's High-end Chip Alliance. Its main business is 3D NAND flash memory design and manufacturing.
