The Chinese will begin to have a noticeable impact on the NAND market next year

As we have repeatedly reported, mass production of 64-layer 3D NAND memory will begin in China towards the end of this year. The memory manufacturer Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) and its head office represented by Tsinghua Unigroup have talked about this more than once or twice. By unofficial data, mass production of 64-layer 128Gb YMTC chips may begin in the third quarter. Distribution of samples of such memory, clarify TrendForce's DRAMeXchange analysts, the company launched in the first quarter of this year. A facility in Wuhan, where YMTC's first 300mm silicon wafer processing plant is located, is now producing limited batches of 32-layer 64Gb 3D NAND.

The Chinese manufacturer did not begin mass production of 32-layer 3D NAND and focused on the goal of moving to the release of a more or less competitive 128-Gb 64-layer NAND flash as soon as possible. This will pave the way for the production of the first YMTC plant at the level of 60 300 mm wafers per month next year. Such volumes cannot be compared with the capabilities of Samsung, SK Hynix or Micron, which process up to 200 thousand substrates per month each. But these volumes of Chinese 3D NAND may exacerbate negative market trends for manufacturers, and they will definitely, as DRAMeXchange is sure, have a tangible impact on the market for NAND memory and products based on such memory as early as next year.

By the way, seasoned competitors themselves give YMTC a head start. This year, in order to curb overproduction, market leaders are reducing investments in the development of industrial lines and even partially - by 5-15% - are reducing the volume of current production of 3D NAND chips. This means that the shift to mass production of 92-96-layer 3D NAND instead of 64-72-layer will be slowed down and postponed until next year. It will also delay the transition of leaders to the release of 128-layer 3D NAND. YMTC, on the contrary, not only does not reduce investment, it will deliberately skip the release of 96-layer 3D NAND and immediately start producing 128-layer memory next year. This technological breakthrough will reduce the gap between the Chinese and American and South Korean competitors to a year or two, which also does not bode well for industry veterans.

Source: 3dnews.ru