Some of our readers may well remember Qimonda, at one time the second largest DRAM memory producer. The company produced various DDR, DDR2, and DDR3 memory products, before eventually going bankrupt in 2009. Its bankruptcy led to its purchase by Inspur Group, a Chinese multinational information technology company headquartered in Jinan, Shandong, China. Using IP form its Qimonda acquisition, the company has now led its Xi'an UnilC subsidiary to become the first Chinese DDR4 producer, with full in-house development of the technology. On which process technology is anyone's guess; that's not being clearly marketed by the company, but it almost certainly isn't a top-of-the-line production process.

Xi'an UniIC's DDR4 lineup includes 4 GB and 8 GB SO-DIMMs, 4 GB and 8 GB UDIMMs as well as a 4 GB UDIMM with ECC, all rated for data transfer rate of 2133 MT/s with CL15 15-15 timings at 1.2 V, which isn't too far away - at least in voltage - from current DDR4 technology. These modules are built with Xi'an UnilC's 4 Gb DDR4 chips. While not overly impressive spec-wise, this news is important in at least two ways: first, it means there's a Chinese company that can leverage its own production for DDR4 memory chips, which will likely start to expand in China's hungry memory market before it starts exporting; second, that the entry of another DDR4 manufacturer into the game will certainly increase the amount of DDR4 memory put into circulation, alleviating China's needs to import memory, and thus leading to increased stock around the world for what should lead, hopefully, to lower DDR4 pricing (eventually, of course).