Tech war: China makes key progress in narrowing mobile memory chip gap with South Korea, US
- CXMT said on Wednesday that it has produced China’s first lower power Double Data Rate 5 DRAM chip, used in mobile devices like smartphones
- The breakthrough comes at a time when China is reporting slow but steady progress in semiconductor development and manufacturing technologies
A leading Chinese semiconductor company has made the country’s first new-generation of advanced mobile memory chips, achieving key progress in narrowing the gap between its South Korean and US rivals.
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) said in a statement on its website on Wednesday that it has produced China’s first lower power Double Data Rate 5 (LPDDR5) dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip, a new generation of memory chip that was first introduced by South Korea’s Samsung Electronics in 2018.
The breakthrough, which was achieved amid stepped-up US sanctions to hamper China’s development in advanced chip manufacturing, will enable China to cut reliance on imported products, which are used in electronic gadgets such as mobile phones and laptops. According to Hefei-based CXMT, one of its products, the 12-gigabyte (GB) version which packs 8 dies each with a capacity of 12 gigabits (Gb), has already been validated by Chinese smartphone makers including Xiaomi and Transsion.
The LPDDR5 memory chip breakthrough comes at a time when China is reporting slow but steady progress in semiconductor development and manufacturing technologies, even though the country has been denied access to crucial high-end lithography systems from Dutch firm ASML, as well as some Japanese suppliers.
Among recent breakthroughs, Huawei Technologies surprised the world by launching its Mate 60 Pro smartphone powered by a locally-made advanced chip. Third-party teardown reports concluded that the chip was probably produced by China’s top chip foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, using existing equipment.
China’s central processing unit developer Loongson, which has been trying to develop its own chips for decades, announced a 3A6000 chip on Tuesday, which state media claimed matched the performance of Intel CPUs from 2020.
CXMT said the new memory chip delivers a 50 per cent improvement in data transfer speed and capacity over its previous low-power DDR4X, while reducing power consumption by 30 per cent. CXMT said the chip will “diversify its product offerings and further expand its presence” in the growing mobile devices market.
Founded in 2016, CXMT represents China’s best hope to catch up with South Korean memory chip giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and US-based Micron Technology, in the global DRAM market.
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/3243258/tech-war-china-makes-key-progress-narrowing-mobile-memory-chip-gap-south-korea-us
CXMT's LPDDR5 DRAM products validated by Xiaomi and Transsion
ChangXin Memory Technology (CXMT), the China-based memory manufacturer, announced the launch of several new LPDDR5 DRAM chips, claiming it is China's first memory brand to self-develop LPDDR5 DRAM, and it is also the first to adopt Package on Package (PoP) technology to assembly its chip.
www.digitimes.com
