[News] Assistant to SMIC’s Co-CEO Joins CXMT, Drawing Industry Attention

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With the rising demand in the memory market and Chinese memory companies actively preparing for competition, a report from TechNews indicates that Zhou Meisheng, formerly the assistant to SMIC’s co-CEO Liang Mengsong, has joined ChangXin Memory Technology (CXMT) as the head of the Technical Research and Development Center, attracting attention.

Zhou Meisheng has previously served as the CTO of Lam Research in China, a global research and development equipment technology company. Before that, she held positions in various semiconductor companies, including Chartered Semiconductor (Singapore), UMC, and GlobalFoundries.

Starting in 2017, she served as the Executive Vice President of R&D at SMIC, directly reporting to co-CEO Liang Mengsong. She played a crucial role as Liang Mengsong’s key assistant in driving SMIC’s advanced process initiatives. In 2022, Zhou Meisheng retired, resigning from all positions at SMIC, sparking speculation.

The technology of CXMT continues to make breakthroughs, and by the end of 2023, the official website of CXMT announced the development of China’s first LPDDR5 DRAM chip. They introduced a series of LPDDR5 products, including 12GB LPDDR5, 12GB LPDDR5 with POP packaging, and 6GB LPDDR5 with DSC packaging.

LPDDR5 represents the fifth generation of low-power DRAM, and compared to the previous LPDDR4X, the new LPDDR4X has a 50% increase in capacity and speed, reaching 12GB capacity, a data transfer rate of 6,400Mbps, and a 30% reduction in power consumption.

In fact, CXMT’s main competitor Samsung announced the mass production of 12GB LPDDR5 mobile DRAM in July 2019, while Micron supplied LPDDR5 DRAM with capacities of 6GB, 8GB, and 12GB in February 2020. SK Hynix, on the other hand, announced the mass production of 18GB LPDDR5 mobile DRAM in August 2021. Therefore, considering the timeline, there’s an approximate four-year technology gap between CXMT and other global giants.

As for the DRAM market, it currently remains highly concentrated, dominated by key players such as Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology, collectively holding over 96% of the entire market share.

Read more

• [News] SMIC’s Net Profit Halved Last Year, Faces Further Reductions This Year
• [News] CXMT’s LPDDR5 Release Fuels in Chinese Memory Market, Spotlight Progress of Global Memory Giants

(Photo credit: CXMT)