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Chinese CXMT to Match Micron's DRAM Manufacturing Capacity This Year (www.techpowerup.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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A particularly surprising discovery is that CXMT is constructing its cleanrooms—where the actual silicon is produced—in just around 12 months, whereas the rest of the DRAM manufacturing industry typically takes 21-24 months, nearly a full year longer.

Finally, the report notes that the Chinese government is encouraging CXMT to transfer its DRAM technology IP to other Chinese DRAM manufacturers such as JHICC, Swaysure, and YTMC's subsidiary XMC. This initiative aims to alleviate memory shortages domestically before CAMT-designed DRAM enters other markets, such as the EU and possibly even the U.S.

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[–] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)

It hasn't felt t like there's been much significant performance increases or development in RAM in the last.. decade? Definitely not following moores law (if that even applies here). So if youve spent your time price fixing for the western market instead of developing technology to keep you ahead, then second rate competitors will eventually catch up and cut a huge portion of your market share, and enjoy those inflated prices instead of you. This of course is my very uninformed take, and probably completely inaccurate.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    It hasn't felt t like there's been much significant performance increases or development in RAM in the last.. decade?

    In memory? There's been a ton of improvement, even if most of the coolest stuff isn't making it into DIMMs that are installed in user laptops/desktops.

    Advanced packaging technology has allowed chip manufacturers to put different silicon dies together with increasingly high performance (high bandwidth, low latency) connections in the same package, including with some three dimensional stacking. That way they can mix and match different silicon dies for greater cost effectiveness, yield, performance, etc.

    This also means that in-package memory is now the standard in certain chips. Apple's M-series silicon has its memory packaged right into the CPU/GPU package, as a system-in-a-package, so that the connection between the logic and memory is comparatively much higher performance, several times higher bandwidth than desktops or laptops that don't follow that kind of architecture.

    Similarly, in data centers, the AI boom has caused all the memory manufacturers to switch their production lines to high bandwidth memory, where they vertically stack a bunch of DRAM chips on each other, with ultra-fast, high bandwidth connections, so that they can shove terabytes of memory into these data center servers. These recent generations have been improving speed and bandwidth in ways that make consumer level DDR5 RAM look like child's play.

    So they're improving things. Just not in ways that really show up in DIMM sticks.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Well, sort of, we're currently manufacturing high end ram by shooting gamma rays at an ultra smooth deflection mirror and moving the silicon back and forth on the other side, so we're hitting the physical constraints of our manufacturing capability.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    To be honest DRAM was dirt cheap for quite a while and the profit margins of those companies were razor thin. Only recently they saw a surge in demand and they are exploiting it to enrich themselves but also increasing the manufacturing capacity is a lengthy and costly process which I presume some of those companies are actively trying to delay, in order to preserve their fat profit margins now.

    Competition is good though and hopefully will lower the price overall faster.

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