As reported by Digitimes, a major enterprise in Wuhan, China has broken ground on the first of three mega-fabs to produce 3D-NAND chips. The final fab name-plate may ultimately read XMC or YMTC or YRST or possibly Changjiang Storage (not to be confused with GuangDong ChangJiang Storage Battery), but it is over half owned by the Chinese government’s Tsinghua Unigroup.
Total investment in XMC/YRST by Tsinghua Unigroup is reported by Digitimes to be US$24 billion. In 2015 Tsinghua Unigroup bid US$23 billion to buy Micron Technology Corp, but the company was not for sale.
In 2013 as reported at EETimes, the fab re-branded itself as XMC from the former Wuhan XinXin Semiconductor Manufacturing (WXIC). Dr. Simon Yang was CEO of WXIC/XMC from 2012 to last November when he resigned to become the CEO of Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. Ltd.
Two months later the new company is reportedly to be called Yangtze River Storage Technology (YRST), according to DIGITIMES. Meanwhile, Nikkei Asian Review reports that YRST is also known as Changjiang Storage.
High-Volume Manufacturing (HVM) in the first fab is planned for 2018, and the third fab on the campus is expected to bring 300k 300mm wafer-starts-per-month online by 2020. Rick Tsai the ex-CEO of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) and Shih-Wei Sun the ex-CEO of United Microelectronics (UMC) have both reportedly joined Tsinghua Unigroup.
—E.K.
