The USA is against Chinese Memory Chip manufacturers

In fact, the US Department of Commerce recently send a warning to the major makers of semiconductor equipment. After forbidding the export of 14-nanometer to China, they are now focusing on memory chip Manufacturers there.

According to four sources with knowledge of the situation, the US is considering limiting the sale of American semiconductor manufacturing equipment. These equipments are to firms making memory chips in mainland China as well as foreign memory producers there. This was revealed in a Reuters article from August 1.

Obviously local Chinese memory chip producers like Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) are suffering by the American crackdown policy. In addition, the memory chip manufacturers in China from South Korean memory chip are also affecting negatively. These producers are famous such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. While SK Hynix Corp. is purchasing Intel Corp.’s NAND flash memory chip manufacturing operations in China, Samsung has two sizable plants there.

The affect of Crackdown

If the crackdown is proceeding, there will be no shipping of American chip manufacturing machinery to China. In a word, the purpose of this action is to protect American businesses by slowing the growth of China’s semiconductor industry.

According to data, the production in the United States have been decreasing from 2.3 percent to 1.6 percent during the same time period. Instead, mainland China’s share of global NAND chip production climbed from under 14 percent in 2019 to over 23 percent this year. Certainly American complete the majority of the chip production business abroad.

According to two sources, U.S. officials would prohibit the shipment to China’s mainland. Under the proposed policy,  these shipments are for semiconductor machinery used to produce NAND chips with more than 128 layers. Major providers of this equipment include Lam Research Corp. and Applied Materials, both situated in Silicon Valley.

YMTC 128L Xtacking 2.0 Peripheral CMOS Die Floor-plan

What effect these possible restrictions would have on other enterprises in China is unknown. Intel, which retains a contract to manage operations in the factory it is selling to SK Hynix in China. They are already producing memory chips with 144 layers at the Chinese site, according to an Intel press release.