China's Tsinghua Unigroup plans to invest in the development and production of 18-nanometer DRAM chips, according to Charles Kau, CEO of Yangtze Memory Technologies Co.

"We are reviewing a plan to develop 18-20-nm DRAMs," Mr. Kau said. The executive had previously worked for Taiwan's memory chip producers including Nanya and Inotera Memories.

The Chinese company has approahed leading DRAM makers such as Micron Technology and SK Hynix for possibly technology tie-ups.

DRAMs are generally harder to produce than NAND flash chips. Until now, Yangtze company has focused on developing 3D NAND flash memory chips.

"We will introduce 32-layer 3D NAND flash memory samples by the year's end and develop 64-layer NAND memories. The technological gap with industry leaders such as Samsung Electronics is not so wide," Mr. Kau added.

Yangtze Memory Technologies is owned by Tsinghua Unigroup and the Hebei IC Industry Investment Fund.