Chinese memory brands ditch Samsung and Micron for homegrown CXMT and YMTC silicon — Corsair, HP, and Dell are already adopting the China-produced DDR5 chips

While we're accustomed to having Samsung, Micron, or SK hynix chips in the best RAM on the market, it may not be long before we start seeing Chinese chips in mainstream memory kits. According to ITHome, many Chinese memory vendors have already defected to domestic producers such as CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies).

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HBM3E vs HBM4 — (Image credit: SK Hynix)

Chinese manufacturers such as CXMT, which produces chips for memory, and YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp.), which manufactures NAND for storage, often enjoy heavy government backing and other subsidies. While there isn't an obligation per se, it's understood that domestic chipmakers contribute to China's technological self-sufficiency; therefore, profits somewhat take a back seat.

While foreign chipmakers, such as Samsung, Micron, and SK hynix, are maximizing profits of data centers and the AI boom, Chinese chipmakers prioritize supplying Chinese companies. To a certain extent, the supply and pricing of memory chips, or NAND, in China are relatively stable because it's shielded from the steep premium charged by the Big Three memory giants.

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Nelson Duann, Silicon Motion's Senior Vice President, in a recent interview with Tom's Hardware, stated that "China is a different market. China has domestic NAND and DRAM makers, and their strategy is not the same as that of foreign memory suppliers. Because they receive government support, they also have a responsibility to help maintain the health of the local market."

Duann went on to say that "foreign suppliers generally follow the highest-return opportunities and can allocate most of their supply to data centers. Chinese suppliers cannot do that in the same way because the government can provide guidance and encourage them to support certain local industries."

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KingBank DDR5 — (Image credit: KingBank)

Chinese memory brands Gloway and KingBank recently announced new DDR5 memory modules that highlight the usage of domestic 24Gb (3GB) memory chips. Using a standard eight-die configuration, these companies could produce 24GB memory modules and package them into dual- or quad-DIMM memory kits for 48GB or 96GB of capacity, respectively.

Chinese memory chips, particularly those from CXMT, have begun to spread outside China. Corsair has already implemented CXMT DDR5 in some memory kits from the brand's prestigious Vengeance lineup. Meanwhile, titans such as HP and Dell have begun qualifying CXMT memory kits for their products. Unfortunately, we haven't had the opportunity to review any memory kits with CXMT chips, so their performance and overclocking headroom remain to be seen.

Despite having just 10 years under its belt, CXMT has gradually become an influential player in the chipmaking game. Thanks to U.S. export controls that have effectively cut China off from acquiring advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography tools, CXMT has made all its progress with trailing-edge deep ultraviolet (DUV) chipmaking tools. The company's 16nm (G4) node is its current flagship manufacturing process, which CMXT uses to produce DDR5 and LPDDR5X chips, or the same ones found in recent Corsair, Gloway, and KingBank memory kits. Whether the use of CXMT DRAM becomes more widespread as a result of the AI supply crunch remains to be seen.

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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

32 Comments Comment from the forums

erazog

The Chinese memory makers don't have technology to produce HBM, that's the reason why they are still pumping out regular DRAM, if they were able to make HBM they would be chasing that premium market just like every other memory maker.
Reply
doomkrad

And if those chips land in products we buy here, in the West, and one day they begin phoning home, what then? 😏

This is less tinfoil-hatty than it might seem. There are precedents.
Reply
ezst036

Actually, this is good news for us.

Should make our prices go down. Or at least have a stabilization for a bit.
Reply
toaste

doomkrad said:
And if those chips land in products we buy here, in the West, and one day they begin phoning home, what then? 😏

This is less tinfoil-hatty than it might seem. There are precedents.

These are DRAM chips. Memory devices are remarkably simple, with only sense amplifiers, muxes, latch arrays, and primitive state machines. All the logic is in the memory controller, and the memory device state machine behavior is part of the timing specifications. It's extremely unlikely to have a DRAM device that both functions correctly and could modify specific data. It's a similar story for NAND. There is just no processing ability on these chips to misuse against a host, they're barely more than arrays of bit cells.

A possible concern is a broken implementation of ODECC allowing a return of row-hammer like attacks. But if you're running consumer DDR4 you're already in that boat.

Really, you are looking in the wrong place. There are better spots in the supply chain for shenanigans. An SSD controller for example, normally has a microcontroller with plenty of capability. Has timing behavior where variable latency is normal. And would be a feasible place to implement a binary patcher.
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ejolson

For me the on-die ECC without monitoring makes it difficult for an end user to judge the quality of a DDR5 module and predict the time until failure. For this reason, there could be lots of hidden variation in quality between vendors that's difficult to detect.

Like many, the solution here is to extend the life of existing DDR4-based computers.

Yeah, row hammer is a problem.
Reply
bigdragon

doomkrad said:
And if those chips land in products we buy here, in the West, and one day they begin phoning home, what then? 😏

This is less tinfoil-hatty than it might seem. There are precedents.
I don't care. The only thing that matters is if the CXMT and YMTC RAM products bring the performance or not. Price and performance are king.

Know what I do care about? Western corporations phoning home. IDGAF if China wants to know what I'm doing with my PC. I very much GAF if an insurance company, payment processor, or taxing authority is gathering that data. Given the extreme number of cookies, trackers, and scripts I'm blocking at both my router and my browser, even the tiniest amount of data sent to China is dwarfed by how much data western organizations are trying to suck up.

Your job is to move money from the buyer's account to the seller's account, Visa -- not pass judgement on the offensiveness of legal content purchased. Your job is to insure the things that are owned and used, State Farm -- not hoard data to find any excuse to claim risky behavior or lack of maintenance and increase rates. Thank you for forcing me to explain to my grandmother a bunch of gamer terms and what furries are, Facebook -- really appreciate that conversation.

So yes, bring on the Chinese RAM iff it performs like the RAM from established providers.
Reply
cvzalez

doomkrad said:
And if those chips land in products we buy here, in the West, and one day they begin phoning home, what then? 😏

This is less tinfoil-hatty than it might seem. There are precedents.
I dont know about Chinese memory DIMMs but my Microsoft Windows 11 is phoning to Microsoft every second, is disgusting!
Reply
drea.drechsler

bigdragon said:
The only thing that matters is if the CXMT and YMTC RAM products bring the performance or not. Price and performance are king.
...
For consumers, absolutely. But I am comforted knowing 'shenanigans' are highly unlikely or impossible in this particular component in the PC.

I also find the article title odd since Samsung, Micron and Hynix had turned their backs on Corsair, HP, Dell and every other consumer PC mfr. a while ago. At least according to what I've been reading ever since the AI bubble hit. That threw the door wide open for the Chinese mfr's to enter the market and start to build a reputation. If they perform well the market will never be the same even after the bubble bursts.

Just slow down the random character brand names like the junk you run into on Amazon. Develop a brand.
Reply
dva852

Like many, the solution here is to extend the life of existing DDR4-based computers.
Motherboard vendors are adopting HUDIMM (half-unbufffered DIMM) with BIOS updates. As the name says, it halves DDR5's dual 32-bit sub-channels to one, along with halving IC count.

https://videocardz.com/newz/msi-adds-hudimm-support-to-intel-800-700-and-600-motherboards
Bandwidth is also halved, so you essentially get DDR4 performance. Gaming is marginally impacted, I think DDR4's 5-10% is a good estimate. Most consumer uses aren't bandwidth-bound, so it won't be noticeable, again like DDR4 vs DDR5. Video creation/editing will take a hit, as obviously anything AI related.

The largest hit for consumers is iGPU, for which perf will be halved. This affects laptops. HSoDIMM will still be adopted, but is geared toward Chromebooks and low-end (~$300).

Memory prices won't come down any time soon. Going forward, you'll have a choice of "tradditional" DDR5 DIMM with hefty premium, or HUDIMM DDR5 (DDR4 equiv) for significantly less. Motherboards will support either type (not sure about both at same time). This is better than investing in dead-end DDR4 setup.

Edit: Google Gemini on using mixed memory types,

Yes, a supported motherboard can run both a HUDIMM and a normal UDIMM at the same time. This is called asymmetric mixing, and motherboard manufacturers like ASRock explicitly engineered support for it into their BIOS updates.How It Works: The "Flex Mode" BehaviorWhen you mix a standard DDR5 stick (which has two 32-bit sub-channels) and a HUDIMM stick (which only has one 32-bit sub-channel), the motherboard's memory controller drops into an asymmetric mode.The Matching Half: The motherboard will pair the single 32-bit sub-channel of the HUDIMM with one of the 32-bit sub-channels on your normal DDR5 stick. This specific portion of your memory will run in dual-channel mode (optimized performance).The Leftover Half: The second 32-bit sub-channel on your normal DDR5 stick is left without a partner. That remaining portion of the memory will drop back into single-channel mode (slower performance).Because of this, your system will technically function perfectly fine, but your memory performance will be uneven depending on which part of the RAM your computer is actively trying to use at any given second.
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dva852

Just slow down the random character brand names like the junk you run into on Amazon. Develop a brand.
There is good financial reason for this practice.

Vendors need to be enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry to have various benefits, such as combatting counterfeits, custom storefronts, etc. To qualify, vendors need to have a registered or pending trademark with US Patent and Trademark Office. Without a trademark, the name can be hijacked by any other vendor with a lower price.

Getting a trademark with USPTO is slow, expensive, and strict. Application can take months and cost hundreds of dollars. And getting one is not a sure thing, when you are using common English words that may match or are similar to existing trademarks.

That barrier disappears when you use meaningless nonsense words, as risk of trademark conflict is minimal. You'll get near-instant USPTO approval, and thus qualify for ABR above.

The second reason is that for Chinese vendors brands aren't important--price is--and are more or less disposable. For this tier, people buy mainly on price. And given the vagaries of selling on Amazon, if a brand fails for whatever reason, vendor can simply create another brand.

A "brand" to typical (Western) buyer is a store of trust. For many Amazon vendors, a brand is a facilitator to selling their goods. It's two different things.
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