Chinese chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies has achieved a significant milestone with its DDR5 production reaching over 90% yield, marking a major step in its rivalry with South Korean giants and boosting its prospects in high-value memory markets.
ChangXin Memory Technologies has taken another step towards narrowing the gap with the established memory giants after reports that its latest DDR5 chips have reached a yield above 90%. Reuters reported that the Chinese chipmaker has become a much more formidable player in the domestic market, while earlier industry commentary had still described its DDR5 production as trailing the leading South Korean makers by a clear margin. That shift matters because yield, the share of usable chips produced from each batch of silicon wafers, is one of the clearest indicators of whether a memory line can compete at scale on cost as well as on technology.
A yield level above 90% would put CXMT much closer to the benchmark associated with Samsung Electronics, which the Chinese outlet KuaiKeji said was producing the same class of chips at 92% to 93%. The significance is practical rather than merely technical. Higher yield means fewer defective chips, more sellable output from the same input and, in turn, lower unit costs. For a manufacturer now supplying PC makers such as Acer, Asus and HP, that could strengthen pricing power in a segment where the company has already moved from being a low-end challenger to a supplier capable of influencing market conditions. TrendForce had previously said CXMT was still wrestling with yield constraints in DDR5, underlining how quickly the position appears to have improved. (investing.com)
The wider industry is watching for a more important test: whether CXMT can sustain similar results in higher-value products such as server DRAM and high-bandwidth memory, or HBM. Reuters reported in July that CXMT had already become powerful enough to demand higher prices from major Chinese customers, at times even exceeding Samsung’s pricing for comparable DDR5 server modules. The company has also won long-term supply business from Tencent and ByteDance, signalling that domestic demand is helping to finance its expansion. If CXMT can repeat its DDR5 progress in harder memory categories, it would represent a more durable challenge to Samsung and SK Hynix than a single product milestone alone. (investing.com)
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