As an aside, when we went looking for pictures to illustrate this news story, Anton discovered that JHICC uses pictures from Intel on its website to illustrate its 300-mm manufacturing capabilities.
I assume this will still help to bring down memory prices, even though they are limited to the Chinese market. If the Chinese will use more of their own memory then less of it will be shipped/consumed by Chinese companies and more will be available for the other markets, hence bringing down the price.
In the very low end of memory yes... Higher end aka speedies memories will remain very expensive. so basic 1800-2400 speeds may get some more competition. Expect to see these in very low cost market computers!
Can't wait for the Chinese manufacturers to relieve the RAM market. The current leading manufacturers obviously is colluding to keep prices insanely hight. If you want something to be affordable, just let China do it.
Pretty arrogant statement coming from someone who totally clueless. The investment required to design ICs comes no where close to the money required to build a modern fab. Intel & TSMC have been investing close to $10bn annually in the past 5 years to push the boundary of process technology. Why in the world have UMC and SMIC been stuck on 28nm for so long when they want to “stay competitive?” They cant even earn $1bn when they are not in the red. Did u know the cutting edge EUV machine costs $100m+ per unit？Tell me how long we should wait for SMIC and UMC get to the leading edge with their terrible return on investment. Or shall we wait for the industry to become even more competitive? Heck, EUV wont even be around if it werent for the joint investment by Intel & TSMC.
that's a pretty stupid and bold claim that has no data to back it up. Colluding? If you have any proof of that, you can make a pretty penny by being a whistleblower. With these DRAM prices, don't you think any manufacturer will ramp up as much capacity as they can to get the most while it lasts?
Were u around in 2015, when dwindling memory prices had Micron widening its losses every quarter? Are u aware the DRAM industry has a long history of capital destruction? If the leading players have been colluding, they must have been doing a lousy job at it.
If you are so confident about their collusion, go bet ur money on Micron, as the stock is only 5x p/e based on last quarter Eps run rate. Otherwise you are worse than a conspiracy theorist that doesnt have the slightlest piece of evidence to show for.
In the short term no. These're all proof of concept plus level fabs, big enough to let the companies involved get experience at scale; but not big enough to shift the market yet. And with the established dram makers at <20nm, their current 22nm products won't be particularly cost competitive at present anyway. If they can get their next generation up and running fast enough that might start to shift the market.
So, if the Chinese manage to ramp up NAND as well, does that mean the smartphone manufacturers over there will have as much vertical integration as Samsung? Huawei is already making their own HiSilicon SoCs and then MediaTek is there for the rest.
Rather empty and misleading and ofc the DDR4 you claim was shipped, are modules made by them that are using Hynix DRAM. And at the end, you mix up design and manufacturing. Mass market memory manufacturing is not easy at all, those time are long gone. For logic their leading player is SMIC. As for design, Hisiliicon is by far the biggest but there are others and their total revenue was over 200 billion CNY last year. CPUs are a commodity, there is ARM, there is RISC-V. Besides, memory is the next compute, the 2 need to merge.
This is payback , for the silkworm, the bone china and the heroin.. Karma . Interesting that the big western company's also produce there too. lets see what happens as the years roll by. I noticed some Chinese Motherboards creeping onto the market .. garish odd looking things.
"The bad news is that without proper return-on-investments the progress of technologies may slow down."
Ya right. Just look at Intel with its monopoly on x86. Tons of technology progress in x86 CPU. :-). Without AMD's Ryzen and EPYC, Intel will still be squeezing the CPU toothpaste for many years.
Without Huawei and ZTE's competition, former number 1 Ericsson will still be squeezing on the 3G/4G toothpaste for a few more years.
Look, there is a reason why there are only so few memory companies left...the industry is very capital intensive such that only the big spenders can survive a downcycle. A natural oligopoly. But I bet that once memory prices stay high for a while, new entrants will come. Just a question of timing. Cheap financing is available everywhere and China has unlimited funds. Big part of demand is also because financing is cheap - servers...cloud biz is not profitable for most players.
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Ryan Smith - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
As an aside, when we went looking for pictures to illustrate this news story, Anton discovered that JHICC uses pictures from Intel on its website to illustrate its 300-mm manufacturing capabilities.http://en.jhicc.cn/products_list/pmcId=15.html
http://download.intel.com/pressroom/images/manufac...
http://download.intel.com/pressroom/images/manufac...
DanNeely - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
And that's why, no matter how easy doing so seems to be, you never have an intern in charge of getting pictures for PR.peevee - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
Chinese stealing IP? Never.tommo1982 - Monday, April 30, 2018 - link
US companies stealing IP? Never happened.GreenReaper - Thursday, June 28, 2018 - link
IP? A fictional creation.5080 - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
I assume this will still help to bring down memory prices, even though they are limited to the Chinese market. If the Chinese will use more of their own memory then less of it will be shipped/consumed by Chinese companies and more will be available for the other markets, hence bringing down the price.haukionkannel - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
In the very low end of memory yes...Higher end aka speedies memories will remain very expensive.
so basic 1800-2400 speeds may get some more competition. Expect to see these in very low cost market computers!
DanD85 - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
Can't wait for the Chinese manufacturers to relieve the RAM market. The current leading manufacturers obviously is colluding to keep prices insanely hight. If you want something to be affordable, just let China do it.ElishaBentzi - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
That right.This text of the article is stupid
"The bad news is that without proper return-on-investments the progress of technologies may slow down".
Intel with big return on investments slow down the development of processors, is competition the source of technology progress.
EBA - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
Pretty arrogant statement coming from someone who totally clueless.The investment required to design ICs comes no where close to the money required to build a modern fab. Intel & TSMC have been investing close to $10bn annually in the past 5 years to push the boundary of process technology. Why in the world have UMC and SMIC been stuck on 28nm for so long when they want to “stay competitive?” They cant even earn $1bn when they are not in the red. Did u know the cutting edge EUV machine costs $100m+ per unit？Tell me how long we should wait for SMIC and UMC get to the leading edge with their terrible return on investment. Or shall we wait for the industry to become even more competitive? Heck, EUV wont even be around if it werent for the joint investment by Intel & TSMC.
menting - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
that's a pretty stupid and bold claim that has no data to back it up. Colluding? If you have any proof of that, you can make a pretty penny by being a whistleblower. With these DRAM prices, don't you think any manufacturer will ramp up as much capacity as they can to get the most while it lasts?StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
They have been found to have been colluding in the past with price-fixing lawsuits.Whether they are currently colluding still remains to be seen however.
Alexvrb - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
Can't wait for the Chinese to gradually ramp up production and seize control of the market using stolen technology.EBA - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
Were u around in 2015, when dwindling memory prices had Micron widening its losses every quarter? Are u aware the DRAM industry has a long history of capital destruction? If the leading players have been colluding, they must have been doing a lousy job at it.If you are so confident about their collusion, go bet ur money on Micron, as the stock is only 5x p/e based on last quarter Eps run rate. Otherwise you are worse than a conspiracy theorist that doesnt have the slightlest piece of evidence to show for.
FreckledTrout - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
Is it expected to have an impact on DRAM pricing globally?DanNeely - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
In the short term no. These're all proof of concept plus level fabs, big enough to let the companies involved get experience at scale; but not big enough to shift the market yet. And with the established dram makers at <20nm, their current 22nm products won't be particularly cost competitive at present anyway. If they can get their next generation up and running fast enough that might start to shift the market.jimjamjamie - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
So, if the Chinese manage to ramp up NAND as well, does that mean the smartphone manufacturers over there will have as much vertical integration as Samsung? Huawei is already making their own HiSilicon SoCs and then MediaTek is there for the rest.Will be interesting to see what happens.
jjj - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
Rather empty and misleading and ofc the DDR4 you claim was shipped, are modules made by them that are using Hynix DRAM.And at the end, you mix up design and manufacturing.
Mass market memory manufacturing is not easy at all, those time are long gone. For logic their leading player is SMIC.
As for design, Hisiliicon is by far the biggest but there are others and their total revenue was over 200 billion CNY last year.
CPUs are a commodity, there is ARM, there is RISC-V. Besides, memory is the next compute, the 2 need to merge.
dromoxen - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
This is payback , for the silkworm, the bone china and the heroin.. Karma . Interesting that the big western company's also produce there too. lets see what happens as the years roll by. I noticed some Chinese Motherboards creeping onto the market .. garish odd looking things.South_DL - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
Tech thieves! from the Chinese Politburo this is not good for the industry!jiunshyong - Tuesday, May 8, 2018 - link
"The bad news is that without proper return-on-investments the progress of technologies may slow down."Ya right. Just look at Intel with its monopoly on x86. Tons of technology progress in x86 CPU. :-). Without AMD's Ryzen and EPYC, Intel will still be squeezing the CPU toothpaste for many years.
Without Huawei and ZTE's competition, former number 1 Ericsson will still be squeezing on the 3G/4G toothpaste for a few more years.
bebby - Tuesday, May 29, 2018 - link
Look, there is a reason why there are only so few memory companies left...the industry is very capital intensive such that only the big spenders can survive a downcycle. A natural oligopoly. But I bet that once memory prices stay high for a while, new entrants will come. Just a question of timing. Cheap financing is available everywhere and China has unlimited funds.Big part of demand is also because financing is cheap - servers...cloud biz is not profitable for most players.