J. Microelectron. Manuf. 3, 20030203 (2020) doi: 10.33079/jomm.20030203

Editorial Introduction: China's IC industry has been flourishing in recent years, huge market demand together with government investments are the major driving forces for this development. The status and development momentum of the Chinese IC industry also attracted wide interest and attention of international counterparts. A group of domestic IC experts are invited by the JoMM to write a series of articles about China's IC industry, including the history, current status, development, and related government policies. Information in these articles is all from public data from recent years. The purpose of these articles is to enhance mutual understanding between the Chinese domestic IC industry and international IC ecosystem.

Current Status of the Integrated Circuit Industry in China

― Overview of the Memory Industry

1. Status of China's Memory Market products, China has a huge demand for memory chips. According to data released by the General In the past years, the Chinese memory chip Administration of Customs of China [2], the total cost market has been occupied by foreign manufacturers. of imported integrated circuits in China reached According to TrendForce statistics [1], the top five 312.058 billion dollars throughout 2018. Among them, global NAND Flash in Q4 2019 are by Samsung the number of memory imports was as high as (36.6%), (18.9%), (14.2%), 123.083 billion dollars (imports increased by 1188.99% (12.1%) and SK Hynix (9.7%). year-on-year), accounting for 39.4% of total imports. The top five vendors share a total of 91.5% of the Figure 1 shows that in 2018, the global market. In the global DRAM market, it was semiconductor market reached 477.94 billion Dollars, monopolized by 44.1% of Samsung, 28.4% of SK of which the global memory chip market is about 170 Hynix, and 22.0% of Micron Technology. The three billion dollars. China's memory imports accounted for companies share a total of 96.9% of the market. As the 25.8% of the global semiconductor market in 2018, world's largest manufacturer of electronic products and 72.4% of the global memory chip revenue. and significant consumer market for electronic

Figure 1. Statistics of China's Memory Import and Export (2007-2018).

1 Current Status of the Integrated Circuit Industry in China ― Overview of the Memory Industry

2. Chinese Memory Companies Toggle DDR, with I/O speed up to 1.4Gbps. However, most NAND suppliers can only provide I/O speed of 2.1 Yangtze Memory Technology Corp. (YMTC) 1.0 Gbps or lower. The Xtacking architecture of YMTC has successfully increased the speed of the I/O In July 2016, Tsinghua Unigroup, National interface to 3Gbps, which is comparable to the I/O Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, Hubei speed of DRAM DDR4. Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, and In terms of production capacity, according to the Hubei Science & Technology Investment Group Co., plan, the capacity of 64-layer 3D NAND flash Ltd established YMTC. According to statistics, the memory of Yangtze Storage by the end of 2020 is total investment of YMTC is about 160 billion yuan. expected to increase to 60,000 wafers per month. In Among them, Tsinghua Unigroup accounted for 51.04% 2020, YMTC will skip the 96-layer stack and go of the shares [3]. directly to the 128-layer stack, striving to shorten In December 2016, the national memory base further the gap with companies such as Samsung and with YMTC as the main body officially started . construction, including three 3D NAND Flash Fab According to Chen Jiewei, research associate of plants with the most extensive clean room in the world, DRAMeXchange [4], a researcher of Jibang one headquarters R&D building and several other Technology, the Changjiang Storage Chengdu Plant is supporting buildings. It is expected that after the expected to be put into operation in the Q2 2020, project is completed, the total production capacity when it may have a production capacity of 5,000 will reach 300,000 wafers per month, and the annual wafers per month. By the Q4 2020, the production revenue will exceed 10 billion dollars. Relying on the capacity can climb to 20,000 wafers per month. The existing 12-inch advanced integrated circuit current capacity of the Wuhan factory of YMTC is technology research and development and about 20,000 wafers per month. It is expected to reach manufacturing capabilities of Wuhan Xinxin 50,000 wafers per month by the Q4 2020. By then, the Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (XMC), the independent capacity of the entire 3D NAND Flash of Yangtze R&D and international cooperation are carried out in Storage will reach 70,000 wafers per month. It is parallel, YMTC has successfully developed China's already close to 's 85,000 wafers per month first 3D NAND chip in 2017. With the production capacity. However, compared with mass production of 32-layer NAND Flash of YMTC Samsung's production capacity of 470,000 wafers per in 2018, China's flash memory chips have finally month, there is still a considerable gap. It only achieved a breakthrough. However, due to the fact accounts for 4.6% of the global 3D NAND Flash that the technology is quite different from the global production capacity. However, Chen Weiwei expects mainstream technology, it will not affect the market. that as Yangtze Storage's new 3D NAND Flash In contrast, in 2019, YMTC officially announced production capacity continues to increase, it is the mass production of 64-layer 256 Gb TLC 3D expected that by 2023, YMTC's share of global 3D NAND Flash based on the self-developed Xtacking NAND Flash production capacity will increase to architecture, remarkably it can bring competition to 10.8%, in order to catch up with Intel (6.6%) and the current middle- and low-end market. Note that, Micron (10.3%). this flash memory meets the mainstream market application requirements such as solid-state drives and embedded storage. Compared with the 64/72- layer 3D NAND flash memory currently available in the industry, it has higher storage density. This is mainly attributing to the Xtacking architecture independently developed by Yangtze River Storage. At present, NAND flash memory mainly uses two I/O interface standards, in which the first standard refers to Intel//SK Hynix/Group/Western Digital/Micron's ONFi. The latest ONFi 4.1 Figure 2. 128L QLC 3D NAND. specification released in December last year can deliver I/O interface maximum speed up to 1200MT/s On April 13, 2020, YMTC announced that its (1.2Gbps). The second standard is Samsung/Toshiba's 128-layer QLC 3D NAND flash memory (model: X2-

J. Microelectron. Manuf. 3, 20030203 (2020) 2 Current Status of the Integrated Circuit Industry in China ― Overview of the Memory Industry

6070) has been successfully developed and has been with an area of 274,000 square meters, will be put into verified on terminal storage products such as SSDs of use in the second half of 2018. multiple controller manufacturers. X2-6070 is the According to the plan, the manufacturing industry's first 128-layer QLC 3D NAND flash technology work of JHICC is mainly carried out by memory with the highest storage density per unit area, UMC. The first phase of the overall JHICC project the highest I/O transfer speed and the highest capacity will invest a total of 5.3 billion US dollars and will be of single NAND flash memory chip. Also released officially put into production in the third quarter of this time are 128-layer 512Gb TLC (3 bit/cell) flash 2018. The monthly capacity of inch wafers is memory chips (model: X2-9060) to meet the needs of expected to reach 60,000 wafers. The company aims different application scenarios to launch a 20-nanometer product finally and plans to Chang Yi, Senior Vice President of Yangtze complete a monthly production capacity of 240,000 Storage Markets and Sales, said: "As a newcomer in wafers by the fourth phase by 2025. the flash memory industry, YMTC has achieved a leap However, due to the litigation between JHICC from 32 layers to 64 layers to 128 layers in just three and Micron, on October 29 local time in the United years. The cohesion of people's sweat is also the result States, the United States included JHICC on the list of of a collaboration between the upstream and entities subject to export control [6]. Two days later, downstream of the global industrial chain. With the UMC also announced a suspension of R&D support advent of the Xtacking 2.0 era, YMTC has the for JHICC. So far, Jinhua, Fujian's DRAM has almost determination, strength, and ability to create a new stagnated. business ecology, so that our partners can fully Use At that time, JHICC had 200 semiconductor their advantages to achieve mutual benefit and win- devices in place and planned to conduct small-scale win." trial production at the end of the year. It was expected As a semiconductor memory enterprise that it would realize volume production at the scale of integrating chip design, process development, wafer several thousand wafers by early 2019. It planned to production and testing, sales and service, YMTC become the first domestic manufacturer of mass- provides advanced storage products and solutions for produced DRAM chips soon. However, due to the U.S. customers worldwide, which are widely used in ban, many related equipment and technology mobile communications, computers, data centers and suppliers stopped supporting. consumer electronics and other fields. 2.3. GigaDevice Semiconductor Inc. 2.2. Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. As a listed company, GigaDevice is the first (JHICC) integrated circuit design company specializing in the JHICC was established in 2016. It is an advanced design of memory and related chips [7]. Committed to integrated circuit manufacturing enterprise jointly the design and development of various high-speed and established by Fujian Electronic Information Group low-power memory, high technology, low power and Jinjiang Energy Investment Group Co., Ltd [5]. consumption, and low cost are its product The Jinhua project has been included in the national characteristics. Successfully developed the first Serial "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan (2016-2020)", specifically Flash product and the first GigaROM product in 2008, in the important layout of integrated circuit breaking the monopoly of foreign countries and filling productivity planning, and has achieved support by the domestic gap. In 2012, the monthly sales of Serial the national special construction fund which is Flash products exceeded 70k for the first time, and the investment from Fujian Anxin Industrial Investment production process was advanced to 65nm, serial the Fund. The fund was jointly developed and established market share of flash memory has always remained by the "National Integrated Circuit Industry the first in China. Investment Fund (commonly known as the Big In October 2019, Gigadevice's new generation of Fund)" and three levels of government including high-speed 8-channel SPI NOR Flash-GD25LX256E Fujian Province, Quanzhou City, and Jinjiang City, won the 2019 14th "China Chip" Excellent with a target scale of 50 billion yuan. Technology Innovation Product Award issued by the In November 2017, the main plant of the 12-inch China Electronics and Information Industry random access memory (DRAM) production line Development Research Institute. GD25LX256E is the (Jinhua Project), which was jointly operated by UMC new GD25LX series launched by Gigadevice in 2019. and JHICC, was officially capped. The Fab main plant, It is also the first domestic high-speed 8-channel SPI

J. Microelectron. Manuf. 3, 20030203 (2020) 3 Current Status of the Integrated Circuit Industry in China ― Overview of the Memory Industry

NOR Flash product with a maximum clock frequency After several years of research and development, of 200 MHz and a data throughput rate of up to 400 on September 19, 2019, Hefei Changxin Memory MByte/s, which is five times that of current products officially announced the mass production of the the above. independently developed 8Gb DDR4 chip based on the 19nm process. According to the plan, Changxin Memory Hefei 12-inch fab is divided into three phases. The first phase of full-load production capacity is 120,000 wafers. It is expected to be implemented in three phases. The first phase will complete 40,000 wafers per month, which is currently 20,000 wafers, reaching Figure 3. MCU based on RISC-V core. 40,000 wafers at the end of the first quarter of 2020. Planning and construction of the second phase of the The main products of Gigadevice are Serial project will begin in 2020, and the development of Flash and MCP. The products have the characteristics 17nm process DRAM will be completed in 2021. of high reliability, low power consumption and From the current situation and planning of adaptability to portable applications. The company Changxin Memory, although it has already achieved has advanced production lines from third parties and mass production of 8Gb DDR4, its production strong production capacity support. Continuous capacity is still minimal. Even if the production improvement and production cost control. Products capacity of 40,000 wafers per month in the first phase are widely used in handheld mobile terminals, of next year is achieved, compared with the total consumer electronics, personal computers and volume of more than 1.3 million wafers per month peripherals, networks, telecommunications that the top three manufacturers in the world can equipment, medical equipment, office equipment, achieve in the fourth quarter of next year, it is still It automotive electronics and industrial control is a stalemate. However, it is foreseeable that with the equipment. continuous improvement of Changxin Memory technology and production capacity, it is expected to 2.4. Changxin Memory Technologies Inc (CXMT). occupy an essential place in the global DRAM market Founded in May, 2016 in Hefei, Anhui, CXMT in the future. is an integrated design and manufacturing company Changxin aims to comply with the national specializing in dynamic random-access memory strategy of accelerating the development of the (DRAM) [8]. CXMT has already put its first 12-inch integrated circuit industry, relying on the strong wafer fab into production. DRAM products are used support of the Hefei municipal government and in a wide range of fields, including mobile devices, industrial capital, introducing first-class talents and computers, servers, artificial intelligence, virtual process technology, concentrating on research and reality, and Internet of Things, enjoying tremendous development of its intellectual property, and and growing market demand. committed to becoming the first 12-inch in China In 2017, through cooperation with Qimonda, Professional storage IDM enterprise. Changxin Memory has collected more than 10 million The company gathered leaders in the integrated DRAM-related technical documents and 2.8TB of circuit industry, experts in R&D, design and data, which is also one of the original DRAM manufacturing, as well as an international technology sources of Changxin Memory. management team. Adhering to the concept of continuous, honesty and integrity, and actively cultivating outstanding local talents, we are determined to become a model company of "Created in China" with cutting-edge technology development capabilities and process manufacturing capabilities. The company has a total investment of 8 billion US dollars in the first phase and plans to complete the construction of the plant in the third quarter of 2017 and achieve formal production in 2018. Figure 4. DRAM Memory At present, the Hefei Changxin 12-inch memory

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wafer manufacturing base is in the stage of by themselves, and manufactured by foundry abroad. accelerating construction. Once the project is In 2015, Tsinghua Unigroup also tried to enter the officially put into production, it is expected to account field of DRAM and 3D NAND through the for about 8% of the global DRAM market share, acquisition of Micron, but the acquisition of Micron thereby filling China's DRAM memory in the was rejected by the U.S. government thus failed to domestic market Whitespace. fulfil its wish.

2.5. Tsinghua Unigroup 3. Opportunities and Challenges

Tsinghua Unigroup is the second-largest From the perspective of the development of integrated circuit high-tech enterprise in China after domestic memory manufacturers, the main [10] , and it has made massive investment in order opportunities exist in to the followings : to lead the domestic storage chip industry [9]. Since First, the global memory chip prices continue to 2016, Tsinghua Unigroup has started construction of rise, and the market is in short of supply; memory chip and memory manufacturing plants with Second, the continuous development of a total investment of nearly 100 billion U.S. dollars in technologies such as smartphones, artificial Wuhan, Nanjing, and Chengdu, which has initiated intelligence and the Internet of Things has led to an Tsinghua Unigroup's grand plan in the chip increase in demand for memory chips; manufacturing industry over the next ten years. Third, the speed of global memory leading In July 2016, Tsinghua Unigroup, National technology breakthroughs has slowed down, and the Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, Hubei continuous maturity of various technologies; Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, and Fourth, the continuous introduction of national Hubei Ketou jointly established the YMTC based on policies has expanded the trend of government- Wuhan Xinxin, thus forming a controlling stake in enterprise cooperation. YMTC. The total investment to YMTC will be more While opportunities exist, the challenges faced than 24 billion U.S. dollars. It is also one of Tsinghua by domestic memory manufacturers are non- Unigroup's most significant investment projects to negligible, mainly in the following three aspects: date. First, the lack of domestic memory technology talents has led to slow technology research and development; Second, the rising price of raw materials has led to excessive investment; Third, memory is growing too fast, inducing the risk of overcapacity in the coming future.

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[6] “危局待解 福建晋华遭多方‘围剿’-科技-公司-中 [9] “Tsinghua Unigroup-From chip to cloud, innovating 国经营网.” to realize our dreams.” https://www.unigroup.com.cn/en/ http://www.cb.com.cn/index/show/gs/cv/cv12527717137/p (accessed Jun. 18, 2020). /s.html (accessed Jun. 18, 2020). [10] “中国存储器芯片市场风云迭起 谁将成为‘搅局 [7] “Company Profile.” 者’？-网络通信-电子工程世界网.” https://www.gigadevice.com/about/company-profile/ http://news.eeworld.com.cn/wltx/article_2017121818423.h (accessed Jun. 18, 2020). tml (accessed Jun. 18, 2020). [8] “Overview - CXMT.” https://www.cxmt.com/en/about-us/over-view/ (accessed Jun. 18, 2020). .

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