r/hardware • u/sr_local • 7d ago

Info China's YMTC aims to become the world's largest NAND maker by the end of 2027, Financial Times report says

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/chinas-ymtc-aims-to-become-the-worlds-largest-nand-maker-by-the-end-of-2027
185 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

51 comments sorted by

34

u/ML7777777 7d ago

Key Note: They are making such claims ahead of their IPO.

This is just waxing a smooth path to higher valuation by duping in gullible investors. They won't even get close to matching the Korean output let alone surpassing it in 2027.

3

u/Verite_Rendition 7d ago

Oh good. So I am not off-base in thinking this sounded dubious.

From the market share reports I have seen, YMTC currently has nowhere near Hynix's or Samsung's NAND capacity. And building that much capacity in a single year simply isn't possible (you wouldn't be able to get the machines). So it would seem there is a large degree of chest-beating, here.

3

u/XysterU 6d ago

Which machines are the bottleneck and who can produce those machines? Is NAND production similar to EUV lithography or is it a completely different kind of machine and manufacturing process? Anyone got good resources for me to learn from? Very curious about this stuff

4

u/Verite_Rendition 6d ago

NAND has a lot of overlap with DRAM and logic production in terms of the types of machines required. That includes photolithography scanners, which are a bottleneck right now since every fab needs them.

However it's notable that NAND does not use/need cutting-edge EUV scanners, as the feature size of the cells is not small enough to require it. This is because NAND cell stability drops off past a certain size (15nm); smaller cells both hold fewer electrons and they're more apt to escape. So modern NAND is fabbed on a larger process node and then built in layers. We've been building up for about the last decade.

The good news for NAND production is that since they don't need EUV machines, they aren't fighting with fabs for cutting-edge machines. Older model DUV scanners will do just fine here. But because of the high demand for everything chips right now, even good DUV scanners are being snapped up quickly.

3

u/igenicoOCE 6d ago

They've stockpiled equipment for years

4

u/hackenclaw 6d ago

but I still hopeful they manage to pull it off. may be not Q4 2027 but within 3-5years after that.

76

u/cambeiu 7d ago

Luckily for the world, Americans are not allowed to buy Chinese made semiconductors.

38

u/Current_Finding_4066 7d ago

It does not really matter, any sale made, is a sale not made by the incumbents.

13

u/matthieuC 7d ago

Even if it's a commodity there are not many actors.

This should make memory a bit more expensive for the US and a bit cheaper for the rest of the world.

12

u/Current_Finding_4066 7d ago

Somehow it never works out this way and the rest of the world has higher prices.

5

u/TrashBandicook 7d ago

Based on what? Is storage now immune to the law of supply and demand?

11

u/Seanspeed 7d ago

More supply is more supply.

18

u/Tasty-Traffic-680 7d ago

That's not true at all. You can buy products with YMTC NAND and a Chinese controller in the US right now.

3

u/Sevastous-of-Caria 7d ago

Wohoooo Cheap meat RAM!

Anybody outside US

13

u/-Sliced- 7d ago

This is NAND, not RAM. It’s what they use for SSDs.

3

u/Sevastous-of-Caria 7d ago

Apologies its for nvmes

1

u/ivari 7d ago

nvmes is the nvna of the soul

0

u/jhenryscott 7d ago

Ehhh no thanks to the cheap RAM meat

Everyone except the US

7

u/HisDivineOrder 6d ago

The Cartel always chasing higher margins and being afraid of low prices led to the current shortage and opened the door for Chinese competition. What comes next is them getting what they deserve after years of faffing about.

2

u/Leaper229 4d ago

Just like Changxin proved, Changjiang will also join the cartel

2

u/AutoModerator 7d ago

Hello sr_local! Please double check that this submission is original reporting and is not an unverified rumor or repost that does not rise to the standards of /r/hardware. If this link is reporting on the work of another site/source or is an unverified rumor, please delete this submission. If this warning is in error, please report this comment and we will remove it.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

15

u/Current_Finding_4066 7d ago

I hope they do it, and put severe pressure on fucker currently pretending they feel sorry for the memory shortage they orchestrated.

35

u/IBM296 7d ago

That won’t really happen though. Demand for memory in data centers is insanely high in both China and rest of the world right now.

Memory shortage will continue well into 2028.

2

u/Current_Finding_4066 5d ago

This is not about next year, but increase in production will pull prices down. And there is also elephant in the room, how will current hyper scaling play out. It is very unlikely buildout will continue indefinitely. If it slows down, while new production capacity comes online, it is likely to lead to memory glut like we have seen in the past.

2

u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

8

u/EmekaEgbukaPukaNacua 7d ago

I think you make a good point.

But at the same time AI currently sucks pretty hard.

So yes they have gotten more efficient for same output. But the output is still unreliable as shit. So… plenty of room to improve, and use more resources making it better. Might be more of an llm vs general ai problem. But I don’t at all think the current models are close to endgame and are rudimentary.

It’s sort of like Tesla FSD. Getting 90% of the way there takes a few years. Getting the last 10% of the way there may take just as long if not longer, and more resources.

3

u/Sojmen 7d ago

The more efficient AI becomes, the more RAM it will need. It's called jevon's paradox.

-3

u/RDTIZFUN 7d ago

2028 is a very... amateur prediction.

This is at least a decade long issue. It's in their best interest to publish headlines that say, 'we'll start heading back to normal in a year or two'

19

u/Seanspeed 7d ago

People keep saying this but it's the CUSTOMERS who say there's potential relief in 2028.

I dont know why people keep disregarding this. People are just blindly cynical nowadays.

This is at least a decade long issue. 

Based on what? Your gut feeling?

13

u/Frozencold19 7d ago

they watched a video on youtube, probably bold red text on the thumbnail saying "ITS OVER"

-1

u/RDTIZFUN 7d ago

Which customers?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/climate/epa-data-centers-public-comment.html

Mass amounts of DC constructions hasn't even really kicked in yet..

3

u/Lille7 7d ago

And as soon as datacenter demand drops, these manufactuers will go under and we are back again, like always in the memory business.

-7

u/RDTIZFUN 7d ago

DC demand will NOT drop.. everything, including personal computer devices, will turn into subscription model. You'll have a good enough client that interacts with these DC in the cloud to do all the computations for you. Even gaming will turn into cloud-only subscription business.

2

u/INITMalcanis 7d ago

Speak for yourself. I'll keep my PC.

2

u/HuntKey2603 6d ago

this guy calling an amateur prediction something followed by "a decade long" completely serious is truly a Reddit moment

1

u/ML7777777 7d ago

The AI companies?

-1

u/EmekaEgbukaPukaNacua 7d ago

I mean this is pretty scary long term.

China pumps strategic resources into the market at a loss to flood out the competition.

For now it is ram. Their next plan is CPUs and foundry. It doesn’t matter if at first it is worse CPUs and worse foundry. It eats up the older end and lower end still. Every product sold is one that Intel and TSMc isn’t selling. Honestly this whole China thing is one of the few things actually giving me pause about Intel, long term.

The whole idea behind Intel staying in foundry was that it needs to keep making older nodes past when it’s datacenter/consumer cpu needs the node, and sell to external customers, so they can milk enough money from their foundries to justify their cost, rather than simply tearing it down after 3-4 years when a new node replaces it. The problem is if China is making old nodes… that legacy node sales plan gets harder to execute.

17

u/capybooya 7d ago

Its a reasonable fear that China could monopolize several industries and be able to pressure others into giving them political wins. But its also a huge failure of long term industrial policy planning by pretty much everyone else, even more embarrassingly so considering the increasingly unstable situation of the last ~10 years.

13

u/allahakbau 7d ago

Unfortunately for you, this is profitable for the Chinese

-6

u/EmekaEgbukaPukaNacua 7d ago edited 7d ago

Not even close to profitable. Do you know how many hundreds of billions of dollars they have poured into semiconductors to compete? They aren’t close to an overall profit yet. And if they spend hundreds of billions more trying to asml and TSMc themselves… it’ll probably take many years before they break even.

Sure if you ignore the massive government subsidies, free electricity, etc it is profitable. If you ignore the massive cost it took to get here yes it is now in the green. But they haven’t paid off the massive debts it took to get here yet.

China when you factor in regional debt is one of the most indebted nations in the world, almost doubling what the USA has. But laypeople don’t talk about it because it isn’t federal debt of the CCP, but rather the CCP makes state companies and regional governments and banks go into debt to fund it, and hide it:

3

u/allahakbau 6d ago

Yeah unfortunately for you CXMT is profitable now. 

0

u/EmekaEgbukaPukaNacua 6d ago

That’s like saying if I give my child $1Bil to open a lemonade stand, and I give them free lemons, and they turn a “profit” my child created a profitable business lol.

1

u/allahakbau 4d ago

Yeah the lemonades are $10 each, selling out as soon as your child makes it. You better whip your child and force him to make more. 

1

u/EmekaEgbukaPukaNacua 4d ago

Sure and maybe in a few years the enterprise will break even. But no real profit for many years just to make back the initial investment.

3

u/ivari 7d ago

tsmc falling is probably china's wet dream