The United States is targeting domestic storage giants! Is storage chips a new target for sanctions?
Latest update time：2021-08-31 20:49
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After the U.S. Department of Commerce announced on July 9 that Hangzhou Hualan Microelectronics was included in the Entity List, Voice of America reported on July 12 local time that U.S. congressmen sent a letter to the Department of Commerce requesting that the Chinese mainland storage company Yangtze Memory Technologies be included in the export control entity list. Within a week, the U.S. Department of Commerce has successively targeted two storage technology companies in mainland China.
On July 14, China Taiwan Economic Daily commented on the US move, saying that this may mean that China's storage industry has fallen into the scope of US sanctions. The US intends to impose a comprehensive blockade from the upstream control IC to storage chips in the storage field in order to prevent the mainland from mastering the key technologies of the storage industry.
The US is targeting two Chinese storage companies
According to a Reuters article, the two Chinese storage companies were targeted for similar reasons:
Hualan Microelectronics was included in the US export control entity list because the US Department of Commerce believed that it was "involved in activities that violate the national security and foreign policy of the United States and is purchasing or attempting to purchase goods originating from the United States for unauthorized military purposes."
In a letter to Commerce Secretary Raimondo, U.S. lawmakers declared that "Yangtze Memory Technologies, the leading NAND Flash company in China, has close ties with the military, jeopardizing U.S. national security."
Judging from the main businesses of the two companies, the US is indeed paying close attention to the storage industry in mainland China.
According to the official website of Hangzhou Hualan Microelectronics, the company specializes in core technology research on data storage and information security, and provides integrated circuit chips and technical solutions in the field of data storage and information security. Its chips mainly include four series: mobile storage controller chips, solid-state hard drive controller chips, Bridge controller chips and hard drive array controller chips. It is the only high-tech company in mainland China that owns a full range of digital storage controller chips.
Image source: Sage Microelectronics official website
The official website of Yangtze Memory shows that the company was founded in July 2016 and is an IDM integrated circuit company focusing on the integrated design and manufacturing of 3D NAND flash memory, while also providing complete memory solutions.
It is understood that memory chips are indispensable components of electronic products, and NAND Flash chips are mainly responsible for data storage, involving data writing, erasing and other procedures. At present, a large amount of data is mostly stored in the cloud, and NAND Flash chips have a special status as storage carriers, especially when such chips are used in the field of national defense, which is even more related to national security, and therefore attracted the attention of the United States.
Whose cheese is being moved by the development of China's storage technology?
Blacklisting Chinese companies on the grounds of "military involvement" is a common tactic used by the United States, but industry insiders said that the United States' intention to "blacklist" Chinese storage companies is also to quickly eliminate the possibility that the rise of Chinese storage companies will threaten the relevant markets of American companies.
Take Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., Ltd., which was recommended by U.S. lawmakers to be included in the Entity List, for example. Yangtze Memory Technologies Co., Ltd. focuses on the NAND Flash market. According to IDC research data, the overall Flash MEMORY market size in 2019 was approximately US$46 billion to US$48 billion, accounting for approximately 26% of the total storage market size, ranking third in the digital storage market size. The NAND Flash market size is approximately US$44 billion, and has been on an upward trend in recent years.
In this field, American, Japanese and Korean companies have always been the leaders. According to Statista data, in 2019, the NAND Flash market was dominated by Samsung, Kioxia, Western Digital, Micron, SK Hynix, and Intel, accounting for 33.5%, 18.9%, 14.3%, 13.5%, 9.7% and 9.5% of the market share respectively, and CR6 was as high as 99.4%. The top six American, Japanese and Korean companies almost monopolized the entire NAND Flash market, of which American companies accounted for 38.3%. In the highly monopolized NAND Flash market, manufacturers also have strong bargaining power.
Figure: NAND Flash market competition landscape in 2019
Source: Guosen Securities Economic Research Institute
However, in recent years, Chinese companies have made rapid progress in the field of NAND Flash. 3D NAND is the current mainstream direction of NAND Flash technology. There are only a dozen companies in the world that can mass-produce 3D NAND, including Samsung, Micron, Intel, Hynix, and Yangtze Memory. As of the end of 2019, international giants such as Micron, Hynix, Samsung, and Western Digital have successfully developed 100+ layers of 3D NAND. In April 2020, Yangtze Memory also announced that it would skip 96 layers and successfully develop two 128-layer TLC/QLC products.
In terms of production capacity, Yangtze Memory Technologies is also striving to catch up. The Yangtze Memory Technologies National Memory Project started construction at the end of 2016 with a total investment of US$24 billion. The 3D NAND flash memory wafer factory will be built in two phases and is currently progressing smoothly.
It is worth noting that, at present, Chinese storage companies are not yet able to have a decisive impact on the global storage chip supply market. Whether the US has become wary of the development of China's storage technology remains to be seen through its subsequent actions.
Source: Core Master
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