One Chinese chip design, billions gone from Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung (Picture: Reuters)
CXMT’s 4F² chip design squeezes more memory into less space
CXMT plans to bring a server memory module built on the new design to market by the end of 2026, aiming straight at the part of the memory business where AI demand has pushed prices and profits to record highs. SK Hynix fell more than 10% in Seoul on Tuesday, Samsung dropped 7.4% and South Korea’s Kospi lost 5.5%. CXMT president Cao Kanyu outlined the plan at an industry event in Shanghai on October 10. Micron’s revenue for the quarter ended September jumped to $54.23 billion from $11.32 billion a year earlier, and its gross margin climbed to 86.8%.
ChangXin Memory Technologies, or CXMT, says it has made “key progress” on a denser memory chip design, and the news has sent Micron, SK Hynix, Samsung and a string of storage companies sharply lower. A Chinese memory chipmaker that few investors outside China had heard of until this summer has spent the past week knocking billions of dollars off the world’s biggest chip stocks. The worry is specific. In the US, the Philadelphia semiconductor index slid for a fifth straight session, with Micron, Seagate and Western Digital among the hardest hit. The technology is called 4F², also written as 4F square, where F is the smallest feature a chipmaker can print on silicon. The first product will be a DDR5 RDIMM, the memory module that sits inside data centre servers. CXMT credits a vertical transistor design that keeps electrical leakage in check as cells get smaller. Memory has been the most profitable corner of the AI boom this year. Those numbers rest on a shortage, so even the prospect of a new supplier puts that pricing power in question.