Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., Ltd. (YMTC) will talk next week its latest 3D NAND chips during the Fllash Memory Summit in San Francisco, as China is making progress in producing leading-edge memory chips -- a missing element in the country's efforts to make its own computing systems.
At the event, chief executive Simon Yang will describe what it calls Xtacking as an approach to 3D NAND that delivers a "speed-up to DRAM DDR4 while delivering industry-leading bit density, marking a quantum leap for the NAND market." Xtacking "enables parallel processing of the NAND array and periphery - a modular approach [that will shorten the time-to-market for new generations of 3D NAND and open the possibility for customized NAND flash products," according to the Chinese company.
YMTC is promising company that hs been expected to deliver a commercially viable mainstream memory chip. It was founded in 2016 with a whopping $24 billion in funding, leveraging the 12-inch fabs of China's XMC in Wuhan.
YMTC announced a 32-layer 3D NAND chip last year and said that it would ship this year a 48-layer version. However, YMTC's yields on the NAND production is unknown.
YMTC said that its Xtacking chips will be used in UFS as well as client and enterprise solid-state drives for use in smartphones, PCs, and data centers.
Intel, Micron, Samsung, and Toshiba/WD have announced or are shipping 96-layer, 4-bit-per-cell devices. Samsung said that its chips have DDR4-like speeds at 1.4 Gbits/second.
The China government is investing heavily in chips and requiring foreign firms to transfer their technology in exchange for market access. However, they protested the Trump administration's recent tariffs as an ineffective and even harmful approach. |