Beijing has doubled down on its push for semiconductor self-sufficiency with the establishment of a new $47.5 billion investment fund to accelerate growth in the domestic chip sector. The fund, officially registered on May 24th under the name "China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Phase III", represents the largest of three state-backed vehicles aimed at cultivating China's semiconductor capabilities. The announcement comes as tensions over advanced chip technology continue to escalate between the U.S. and China. Over the past couple years, Washington has steadily ratcheted up export controls on semiconductors to Beijing over national security concerns about potential military applications. These measures have lent new urgency to China's quest for self-sufficiency in chip design and manufacturing.

With a war chest of 344 billion yuan ($47.5 billion), the "Big Fund" dwarfs the combined capital of the first two semiconductor investment vehicles launched in 2014 and 2019. Officials have outlined a multipronged strategy targeting key bottlenecks, focusing on equipment for chip fabrication plants. The fund has bankrolled major projects such as flash memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies and leading foundries like SMIC and Huahong. China's homegrown chip industry still needs to catch up to global leaders like Intel, Samsung, and TSMC. However, the immense scale of state-directed capital illustrates Beijing's unwavering commitment to developing a self-reliant supply chain for semiconductors—a technology viewed as indispensable for economic and military competitiveness. News of the "Big Fund" sent Chinese chip stocks surging over 3% on hopes of fresh financing tailwinds.

Chinese memory maker Yangtze Memory Technology Corp (YMTC) is allegedly preparing its next-generation Xtacking 4.0 3D NAND flash architecture for next-generation memory chips. According to the documentation obtained by Tom's Hardware, YMTC has developed two SKUs based on the upgraded Xtacking 4.0: X4-9060, a 128-layer three-bit-per-cell (TLC) 3D NAND, and the X4-9070, a 232-layer TLC 3D NAND. By using string stacking on both of these SKUs, YMTC plans to make the 3D NAND work by incorporating arrays with 64 and 116 active layers stacked on top of each other. This way, the export regulation rules from the US government are met, and the company can use the tools that are not under the sanction list.

While YMTC has yet to fully disclose the specific advantages of the Xtacking 4.0 technology, the industry anticipates significant enhancements in data transfer speeds and storage density. These improvements are expected to stem from increased plane counts for optimized parallel processing, refined bit/word line configurations to minimize latency, and the development of modified chip variants to boost production yields. When YMTC announced Xtacking 3.0, the company offered 128-layer TLC and 232-layer four-bit-per-cell (QLC) variants and was the first company to achieve 200+ layer count in the 3D NAND space. The Xtacking 3.0 architecture incorporates string stacking and hybrid bonding techniques and uses a mature process node for the chip's CMOS underlayer. We have to wait for the final Xtacking 4.0 details when YMTC's officially launches the SKUs.

Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC), China's biggest NAND flash memory manufacturer, has successfully raised billions of US Dollars in new capital to adapt to challenging US restrictions. According to the report from Financial Times, YMTC, which was added to a trade blacklist in December and barred from procuring US equipment to manufacture chips, exceeded its funding target. However, the exact amount remains undisclosed. The capital increase became necessary due to YMTC's substantial spending on finding alternative equipment and developing new components and core chipmaking tools. This financing round was oversubscribed by domestic investors, reflecting support for YMTC amid tightening US restrictions.

Last year, YMTC managed to raise 50 billion Chinese Yuan or about 7 billion US Dollars for equipment. Spending it all on the supply chain, the company is now looking to bolster its offerings with additional equipment for its memory facilities. One of the investors in the funding rally for YMTC has made a statement for Finanical Times: "If Chinese companies have equipment that can be used, [YMTC] will use it. If not, it will see if countries other than the US can sell to it. If that doesn't work, YMTC will develop it together with the supplier." This statement indicates that the company is looking into several options, where one is simply developing its custom machinery with the suppliers.

During the China Chip Storage Future 2023 Storage Industry Trend Summit, Yingren Technology, widely recognized as InnoGrit outside of China, announced the initiation of mass production of its enterprise-level YR S900 PCIe 5.0 SSD controller. Marking a significant breakthrough, the YR S900 stands as China's first domestic PCIe 5.0 SSD controller. Operating on an open-source RISC-V architecture, the YR S900 is engineered to align with U.S. export restrictions, ensuring a seamless design and manufacturing process of the SSD controller. While Yingren Technology remains discreet about the specific process node to produce the YR S900, it's known that the controller embodies a versatile design, with compatibility extending to mainstream NAND from eminent manufacturers, and exhibits an impressive synergy with NAND from Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC).

The YR S900 is a quad-channel controller, offering sequential read and write speeds peaking at 14 GB/s and 12 GB/s, respectively, and is equipped with InnoGrit's third-generation ECC engine to optimize 4K LDPC encoding and decoding. This collaboration with Kioxia's XL-Flash results in a low 4K random read latency of 10us, highlighting its potential to deliver higher data throughput, increased stability, and extended service life. The YR S900 encompasses a comprehensive feature set, including FDP, SR-IOV hardware virtualization, CMB, and a range of data encryption algorithms. While the mass production of the YR S900 underscores a monumental stride in SSD solutions within China, it remains to be seen whether adopting this new Chinese technology will enter markets beyond China.

According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) sources, Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC) has been plotting to manufacture its advanced 3D NAND flash using locally sourced equipment. As the source notes, YMTC has placed big orders from local equipment makers in a secret project codenamed Wudangshan, named after the Taoist mountain in the company's home province of Hubei. Last year, YTMC announced significant progress towards creating 200+ layer 3D NAND flash before other 3D NAND makers like Micron and SK Hynix. Called X3-9070, the chip is a 232-layer 3D NAND based on the company's advanced Xtacking 3.0 architecture.

As the SCMP finds, YTMC has placed big orders at Beijing-based Naura Technology Group, maker of etching tools and competitor to Lam Research, to manufacture its advanced flash memory. Additionally, YTMC has reportedly asked all its tool suppliers to remove all logos and other marks from equipment to avoid additional US sanctions holding the development back. This significant order block comes after the state invested 7 billion US Dollars into YTMC to boost its production capacity, and we see the company utilizing those resources right away. However, few industry analysts have identified a few "choke points" in YTMC's path to independent manufacturing, as there are still no viable domestic alternatives to US-based tool makers in areas such as metrology tools, where KLA is the dominant player, and lithography tools, where ASML, Nikon, and Canon, are noteworthy. The Wuhan-based Wudangshan project remains secret about dealing with those choke points in the future.

In September, we reported that Apple, the world's most valuable company, would source some of its 3D NAND flash chips from the Chinese Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC). However, according to the latest political pressure from the US government, Apple has reportedly canceled any contracts with the Chinese company and will not include their 3D NAND chips in the production of iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers. Even with YTMC's Xstacking 3.0 six-plane architecture that provides triple-level cell storage with I/O speeds of 2400 MT/s, Apple is not going to source any NAND Flash memory as US-China political relationship gets tighter regulations.

However, this could not be a deal breaker for both companies, as NAND Flash is in high demand, and new clients will emerge. As for Apple, the company has contracts with Kioxia, SK Hynix, Samsung, and possibly others that will ensure a steady supply of storage for the company's solutions.

As reported by BusinessKorea, Apple, one of the largest companies in the world, will source its 3D NAND from Chinese memory maker Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC). Known for supplying 3D NAND to Chinese SSD makers, YTMC's reported contract with Apple will fuel the upcoming iPhone 14 SKU manufacturing. Whether or not this partnership will expand to other products, it is essential to have as many storage sources as possible, as Apple sells millions of devices per year. YTMC is on track to deliver 3D NAND flash with the latest Xstacking 3.0 six-plane architecture that provides triple-level cell storage with I/O speeds of 2400 MT/s.

YTMC has joined the list of 3D NAND flash vendors that Apple works with, including SK Hynix, Samsung, Kioxia, and possibly others. This partnership also highlights that the Chinese memory output is sufficient and significant enough to break into more markets worldwide, not remaining exclusive to domestic use.

According to TrendForce research, looking at NAND Flash wafers, the pricing of which more sensitively reflects the market, suppliers are increasingly motivated to cut prices in exchange for sales due to weak retail demand since March and a more conservative outlook for shipments of other end products. The price of NAND Flash wafers is expected to begin falling in May and the supply of NAND Flash will gradually overtake demand in 2H22. The price decline of NAND Flash wafers in 3Q22 may reach 5~10%.

At the same time, TrendForce indicates that February's contamination incident at Kioxia was expected to tighten the market in 2Q22 and 3Q22. However, as a consequence of rising inflation and the war between Russia and Ukraine, market demand for consumer products in the traditional peak season of the second half of the year is trending conservative and the prices of client SSD, eMMC, and UFS in 3Q22 will be flat compared to 2Q22, breaking from the original expectation that prices may rise. In terms of enterprise SSDs, as demand for data centers remains strong, no significant correction in demand has yet been observed. However, as the overall NAND Flash market gradually moves into oversupply, prices will only grow slightly by approximately 0~5% in 3Q22.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, a professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards, all-in-one gaming and multimedia solutions, and high-performance storage, proudly presents its first-ever PCIe 3.0 NVMe solid-state drive - the COLORFUL WarHalberd CN600. COLORFUL collaborated with Yangtze Memory (YMTC) and Maxio Technology for the CN600 SSD. The cooperation between the companies will ensure the quality and performance of the flash components and the NVMe controller.

The COLORFUL WarHalberd CN600 NVMe SSD is a low-profile NVMe SSD in a standard 2280 M.2 form factor, designed for desktop PCs, laptops, ultrabooks, and mini-PCs. Using PCIe 3.0 X4 interface, the WarHalberd CN600 delivers speeds of up to 3300 MB/s read and up to 2600 MB/s write. The SSD will be offered in 256 GB and 512 GB capacities.

Chinese manufacturer Asgard has announced the company's (and the Chinese market's) first PCIe 4.0 SSD. The AN4 pairs 128 Layer 3D TLC NAND manufactured by YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., Ltd) Xtacking 2.0 technology, which uses a two-step manufacturing process wherein both NAND cells and interconnects are manufactured in two separate wafers and then optically fused. The NAND memory is then paired with Innogrit's IG5236 Rainier controller. The AN4 is rated for 7,500 MB/s and 5,500 MB/s sequential read and write speeds and features a "high" TBW endurance rating, though Asgard didn't clarify the exact random performance figures, nor the TBW rating for the SSD. Pricing is similarly up in the air - Asgard has only announced market availability for the 1 TB SSD solution come August, with additional 2 TB and 512 GB capacities being readied to market for a later timeframe.

The manufacturing technology of YMTC results in NAND that's as fast as Micron's latest 192-layer NAND tech, and beats well-established Kioxia's 96-layer technology performance-wise. One Bilibili forum user put the drive through its paces, and discovered that to unlock its full potential, one has to have a system capable of 512 bit maximum payload size (MPS), which is currently only supported by AMD motherboards - maximum Intel MPS currently stands at 256 bit, which "only" enables sequential performance of up to 7,150 MB/s. The user put the AN4 through a variety of tests, including PCMark 10's Drive Performance Consistency Test - a 10 to 20 hours workload marathon that puts more than 23 TB of drives on the SSD. It seems that Chinese manufacturers have achieved parity with the top western manufacturers, meaning there is one more option in the global, high-performance NAND market.

Yangtze Memory Technology Company (YMTC), China's ambitious new memory manufacturer specializing in NAND flash, launched the first client-segment SSDs under its own brand, the PC005 Active series and the SC001 Active series. Rumors of YMTC developing its own brand SSDs surfaced first in June. Prior to that in May, it was reported that Phison could add support for YMTC NAND flash chips to variants of its existing SSD controllers, and so it's highly likely that the new YMTC SSDs use Phison-sourced controllers. Interestingly, the company deployed its first-generation Xtracking 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash chips instead of its 2nd generation 128-layer QLC chips.

The PC005 Active comes in the M.2-2280 form-factor with PCI-Express 3.0 x4 host interface, leveraging the NVMe 1.3 protocol. The drive is available in 1 TB. 512 GB, and 256 GB capacities. All three variants read sequentially at speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s, wiring at up to 2,900 MB/s, up to 2,500 MB/s, and up to 1,200 MB/s, respectively. Their endurance is rated at 640 TBW for the 1 TB version, 320 TBW for the 512 GB, and 200 TBW for the 256 GB variant. All three are backed by 5-year warranties.

YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp) could launch its own SSD brand soon, according to a DigiTimes report. The Mainland Chinese NAND flash maker, which is taking giant strides with the development of NAND flash memory, could join Micron, SK Hynix, Kioxia, and Samsung, in being NAND flash vendors with their own finished SSD product lines on the side.

The SSD brand could be announced in Q3-2020, and could implement the company's 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory in some of its first drives, moving on to 128-layer NAND flash chips next, as the company has pole-vaulted 96-layer. With Phison coming out with support for YMTC chips, it's likely that the company could get a break with these drives. YMTC is one of the rising stars of China's domestic high-technology industry, and a beneficiary of state investment as part of the Chinese Government's plan to eliminate dependency on foreign computer hardware as part of its "3-5-2 plan."

SSD controller manufacturer Phison Electronics announced that its entire lineup of controllers are compatible with 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips by Yangtze Memory Technology Company (YMTC), the Chinese semiconductor firm specializing in memory devices, which is in the news for rapid product portfolio development in aid of China's plans to reduce dependence on foreign technology.

The company also announced readiness for YMTC's upcoming 128-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips. Phison's controllers feature industry-standard NAND flash interfaces, and supporting YMTC's chips would be as simple as developing an optimized firmware. YMTC leapfrogged from 64- to 128-layer, skipping the 96-layer product cycle. YMTC's 64-layer chips have been in mass-production since September 2019, and 128-layer chips will start shipping out later this year. Phison's first collaboration with YMTC will be for client-segment products, before developing enterprise-grade drives.

China's plans for world domination include the country slowly retracting itself from its dependency on western companies' technologies, via heavy acceleration of plans for and production of a myriad of semiconductor technologies. One of the more important technologies amongst those due to its relative ease of manufacture and overall market value is, of course, NAND technology. And the days of China being undoubtedly behind other manufacturers' technologies seems to be coming to an end, with the countries' Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) 64-layer Xtacking TLC NAND design already achieving pretty impressive results compared to its mainstream counterparts.

Xtacking technology is expected to disrupt the $52 billion NAND memory market and its big players such as Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, Kioxia, Western Digital, and Intel. The technology separates periphery circuits and memory cell operations towards a separate wafer, which allows for increased performance and throughput compared to other designs. Senior technical fellow Jeongdong Choe at Ottawa, Canada-based TechInsights (a company specializing in reverse-engineering semiconductor technology) has told EE Times YMTC's 64-layer, 256 Gb die bit density is 4.41 Gb/mm, which is higher than the Samsung equivalent 256 Gb die at 3.42 Gb/mm.

Mainland Chinese semiconductor firm Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC), has reportedly struck a NAND flash memory chip supply deal with popular solid-state storage products brand Lexar, which specializes in SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives; and more importantly, enjoys a prominent market presence in the West. Micron Technology had, in 2017, sold the Lexar brand to Longsys, a Chinese electronics conglomerate. YMTC's first products sold to Lexar will be a 512 Gbit 128-layer 3D QLC NAND flash memory chip for Lexar's nCard line of microSDXC cards, which ships in 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB densities, offering transfer speeds of up to 90 MB/s reads, with up to 70 MB/s writes.

Mainland Chinese semiconductor firm Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (YMTC) formally launched a product that could serve as a technological milestone for the company, a 128-layer 3D QLC NAND flash memory chip. Carrying the product naming series "X2-6070," the chip implements YMTC's XTracking 2.0 memory stacking architecture. This is a particularly big development for the company considering the chip's immediate predecessor is a 64-layer chip based on XTracking 1.0, which entered mass-production as recently as in September 2019, a time when most foreign firms such as Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, had moved on to 96-layer mass-production, having announced their 128-layer designs around June 2019. YMTC hence appears to have pole-vaulted 96-layer.

"With the launch of Xtacking 2.0, YMTC is now capable of building a new business ecosystem where our partners can play to their strengths and we can achieve mutually beneficial results," said Grace Gong SVP of sales and marketing at YMTC. "This product will first be applied to consumer-grade solid-state drives and will eventually be extended into enterprise-class servers and data centers in order to meet the diverse data storage needs of the 5G and AI era," Gong added. YMTC, part of the state-owned conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup, is one of the dozens of beneficiaries of the Chinese government's initiative of localizing cutting-edge electronics technology, and reducing reliance on foreign hardware.

Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), a Chinese state-backed semiconductor company founded in 2016 as part of the Chinese Government's tech-independence push, has commenced mass-production of 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips, at a rate of 100,000 to 150,000 wafers per month leading into 2020. The 64-layer 3D NAND chips are based on YMTC's "in-house" Xtracking architecture. The company is already developing a 128-layer 3D NAND flash chip, and is skipping 96-layer along the way.

YMTC's capacity will be augmented by a new fab being built by its parent company, Tsinghua Unigroup. Tsinghua is a state-owned company which holds a controlling 51 percent stake in YMTC, and is a beneficiary of China's National Semiconductor Industry Investment Fund. When it goes online in 2021-22, the new Tsinghua fab, located in Chengdu, will augment YMTC's capacity by an additional 100,000 12-inch wafers per month. Its existing fab in Nanjing will also receive a capacity expansion.

Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., Ltd (YMTC), a new player in the NAND industry, will be joining Flash Memory Summit this year for the first time, delivering a much-anticipated keynote address to reveal its ground-breaking technology - Xtacking. YMTC is the first Chinese company to take part in the high-entry-barrier NAND flash memory industry with its new architecture for unprecedented performance, higher bit density, and faster time-to-market.

Simon Yang, YMTC CEO, will deliver a keynote address, Unleashing 3D NAND's Potential with an Innovative Architecture, on August 7th, from 3:00 p.m. at the Mission Ballroom in the Santa Clara Convention Center, where he will illustrate how the company's new technology can increase NAND I/O speed up to DRAM DDR4 while delivering industry-leading bit density, marking a quantum leap for the NAND market.