
Two More Chinese DRAM Fabs Ready - deafcalculus
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12681/chinese-dram-industry-spreading-its-wings-two-more-dram-fabs-ready
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sevensor
> According to a media report, the equipment move-in will be completed by
> early July and the first phase of the fab will be able to start volume
> production of DRAM in the third quarter.

Ouch, that's an aggressive schedule. Two months to qualify the equipment and
the process, train technicians, establish PM schedules, ramp up testing and QA
departments, and run pilot lots? If anything at all goes wrong -- one bad
mask, one misaligned robot that scratches all the wafers, one misconfigured
test program -- you lose three weeks and have to start over. More if you have
to revise a mask. Even more if you don't discover the problem until after
burn-in. If they hit volume production in the third quarter, it's going to be
at the very end of September, and it's going to be a very generous definition
of "volume."

~~~
donald123
The move-in started late in 2017. It's almost a year to do all the
preparations.

~~~
sevensor
Could be. The article wasn't totally clear on the status of the fab. Most
equipment has a few weeks of work (more for a scanner, less for a wet hood) to
be done between when you bolt it to the floor and when you're ready to try it
in production, but it might make more sense to wait until the dust (literally)
has settled if you're moving in a whole row of tools at once.

~~~
donald123
Do you really think they will start making things ready after all the
equipments are moved in?

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dis-sys
When the $ spent on importing chips is more than the amount spent on importing
oil, you know full well that that there is no real alternative but to invest
heavily into the semiconductor industry. In 2016, $227 billion worth of chips
were imported by China [1].

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-
chips/chi...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-chips/chips-
down-china-aims-to-boost-semiconductors-as-trade-war-looms-idUSKBN1HR1DF)

~~~
baybal2
Silicon is the new oil! No, it is by a big extend more important.

Nothing today can throw any country back to a stone age than loss of access to
microelectronics:

1\. Loss of powerplants and the grid infrastructure - possible to rebuild, and
immediate impact is not catastrophic

2\. Loss of food supply stocks - unless, you are blockaded, you can just buy
abroad

3\. Loss of fertilizer stocks - just as survivable as loss of food supply.

4\. Loss of hydrocarbon supply - an even more laughable national emergency.

5\. Heavy industry - just rebuild, you can wholly rebuild it with pre-
industrial tech level.

6\. Loss of microelectronics - you fc*ked - to make microchips, you need more
microchips, and to build those microchips, you need a ton of other microchips.
You achieve nothing if you manage to replicate the technology of the era of
first ICs.

~~~
yitosda
I can't see how #6 would be a larger problem than the others unless all
existing microelectronics disappeared overnight, which doesn't seem like a
real concern.

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vardump
DRAM prices have increased by over 200% since 2016 (more than tripled).
Hopefully these new fabs will bring prices to more reasonable levels.

~~~
bsder
DRAM has _always_ been feast (shortage when new apps cause demand to outstrip
supply) and famine (new fabs lead to oversupply).

This cycle was why Grove and Moore got Intel out of the memory business in
_1985_.

~~~
stefan_
Except I have a feeling that the moment chinese DRAM is reaching viability
prices will magically drop to smother the new competitor.

~~~
drfuchs
Considering how it worked out in the solar cell manufacturing business, you
might expect the exact opposite: eventually all the older manufacturers get
driven out of business.

~~~
nolok
I really don't see Samsung Electronics being driven out of that segment.

~~~
kurthr
They basically don't make mobile (non TV) LCDs any more... and they used to be
one if the largest manufacturers. It's not quite the same, but it's similar.

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baybal2
I have a dissenting opinion.

Rather than getting two more fabs, Chinese state funds have just launched two
more barely working ones that add to a long long list of their failed attempts
to achieve self sufficiency in memory supply.

There were numerous attempts by Xinhua University Group in the past to launch
memory businesses. Judging by that those fabs stand dark for years, none of
them succeeded, and a lot of taxpayers money just got wasted again.

~~~
ksec
1\. They weren't as serious as this time around.

2\. The money involved before were tiny compared to this round.

3\. They now have a market to absorb some lower quality components.

4\. The market is now making so much money from NAND and DRAM that is unseen
in past time. There is not better time to enter the market. Even at half the
yield then other major competitor they would still be able to make money.

5\. I don't think they will catch up in 3D NAND any time soon. But DDR4 seems
to be a easier target.

~~~
baybal2
Ksec, there may be merit to your thought here, but just for point 4. Even
though memory market was always the ultimate cash cow, and price collusion was
always the second name to it, what we see today is something completely
"beyond good and evil."

I regularly meet Unigroup people just below the C-suite level during industry
events in China. The do not give off any sense of brilliance to me, nor I can
say anything high of their ability from what they did before.

Sure, they are probably the top fund by concentration of Oxford and Ivy league
grads in China, and have few returnee cadres with past stellar career in
Western top tier investment funds. I can even go as far as to say that if
judged individually, some can be said to be genuine talents.

With all that star crew, why don't they fly? Because they are dominated people
with stellar credentials, but all of whom are just meh and so so...

Just look what their "genius stratagem" of joining RDA and Spreadtrum did:
they took a leader in one market, a leader on another market, joined them and
got one without lead in any.

When Qualcomm was still greatly greatly handicapped in Chinese market by the
fact that they were limited to high-end as low-to-mid-end market was a shark
tank with likes of Spreadtrum and RDA in their prime. But when Unigroup
decided to forcefully uproot both of them from their power base - domestic
mass market, and mandate them to "abandon it all, focus on high-end, and make
a chip to nail Qualcomm in under a year" they both lost their grip on their
market niches, which Qualcomm and Mediatek were happy to devour, and of course
they never came even close to scoring anything in high end market that
Unigroup wanted. Now they have neither low-end lead, nor high-end lead.

As the saying goes: you don't get iron by joining brass and bronze.

~~~
ksec
I do agree with you on their silly "directions", But,

Let just say marking DRAM isn't rocket science. The key really is yield. And
there is going to be some learning curve involves. UniIC actually posted a
picture last year in December about their success on DDR4, but it was quickly
deleted because the yield was only in single digit, i.e really bad, the info
was shared on Weibo and known internally within the industry but it was
deleted.

In Feb when Anandtech posted the news, I thought it was hoax again. Turns out
UniIC actually did post a PR and yield is now 30%+. Which to be honest is
still crap, but at least in today's market value, they could still break even.
The more trial and error they do, the quicker they will be to up its yield.
Something the market has allow them to do, if it was any previous years, the
lost would be too great no one will be willing to "shoulder" this lost and
lots of work will be needed to save faces.

I don't think Unigroup will mess up again, unless they decide to focus on
something like HBM or LPDDR4, otherwise I think there is going to be sizeable
low end market within China using UniC. I don't expect them to complete in the
high end, but their entry I hope will put a stop in the memory pricing. Which
is like at a ridiculous level.

P.S - UniGroup also has a change a direction and new objective under Xi, no
longer are they acting mindlessly. Which is both a good and bad thing.

