China now producing its own blank wafers as domestic memory company ramps up 3D NAND production — YMTC consumes 500,000 homegrown wafers per month

YMTC
(Image credit: YMTC)

YMTC, a Chinese 3D NAND maker, is not only ramping up production of flash memory at a rapid pace, but does so using silicon wafers produced in China, according to chief executive and chairman of Sumco, a major raw wafer manufacturer. This, among other tactics, allows the Yangtze Memory Technology Co. (YMTC) to increase the output of 3D NAND despite major sanctions imposed by the U.S. government against the company. It also indicates that China is strengthening its chip supply chain to boost the production of its own homegrown blank wafers, which are then used to create various types of semiconductors. 

"Although the majority of wafers produced in China are test wafers, based on our investigations, we understand that wafer production is at around one million," said Mayuki Hashimoto, CEO and chairman of Sumco, at the company's earnings call earlier this month (via SeekingAlpha), according to a quote published by Sravan Kundojjala, an analyst with SemiAnalysis. "The key memory player, where the state is the majority stakeholder, is thought to be consuming 400,000 to 500,000 in domestically produced wafers." 

Chinese 3D NAND and DRAM makers have been procuring new equipment and expanding their manufacturing capacity for several years now. For example, Changxin Memory (CXMT), a DRAM maker, increased its monthly output from 70,000 300-mm wafers per month in 2022 to 200,000 wafers per month in 2024, according to a media report.

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Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.