Chinese memory firm CXMT relied on leaked Samsung technology to skip years of R&D, court testimony claims

[zohaibahd]

Cutting corners: Building a memory chip from the absolute ground up takes years and costs a fortune. ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) apparently decided to skip the hard part – and today, the company stands as China's biggest DRAM producer. A South Korean court recently heard some fairly wild details about how the memory maker actually got its start.

That origin story came directly from a former Samsung Electronics engineer surnamed Jeon, according to Maeil Business. The veteran employee spent almost three decades at Samsung before jumping to the rival firm around 2016. Jeon appeared in a Seoul courtroom this past week to testify under oath about those early days, telling the judge that his new employer lacked basic laboratory facilities and never planned to do its own independent research when it was founded.

Instead, startup executives reportedly wanted to grab a highly confidential blueprint from Samsung right from day one. Engineers in the semiconductor industry call that document a Process Recipe Plan: it lists roughly 600 specific manufacturing steps, telling engineers exactly what temperatures and equipment pressures to use on the factory floor so they don't have to guess.

Samsung spent five years and well over a billion dollars dialing in the specifications for its 18-nanometer memory chips. Prosecutors now say the Chinese firm simply recruited a bunch of former Samsung workers to swipe all of it.

By 2023, the company had begun mass-producing advanced memory chips. Today, its output has grown from 40,000 to 720,000 wafers in just a few years, and it's closing in on Micron.

Unsurprisingly, South Korean authorities haven't let this slide. Prosecutors indicted ten people late last year for illegally leaking protected national technologies, and a judge handed Jeon a seven-year prison sentence this past April for his role.

Proving all this in court could give Samsung a powerful weapon moving forward. Legal experts believe the company might take sworn statements straight to the US International Trade Commission, a body with the authority to block foreign products from entering the country entirely.

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Chinese memory firm CXMT relied on leaked Samsung technology to skip years of R&D, court testimony claims

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Ok, what's anyone going to do about it?

If we've learned anything in the past 10 years its that laws are all well and good until you realize no one is interested in actually enforcing them.

 

[yRaz]

Ok, what's anyone going to do about it?

If we've learned anything in the past 10 years its that laws are all well and good until you realize no one is interested in actually enforcing them.

it's going to get banned in the US to protect the big three's memory profits.

These trade secrets might not be so valuable if they didn't try to monopolize the market. Fun thing is, they kept it secret instead of patenting it, but the process is out in the open now and anyone can use it.

On a final note, people can't be bought if you're the highest bidder. China doesn't have an extradition treaty so these guy ls will probably live the high life in China selling secrets because if they return home they'll be thrown in jail.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

it's going to get banned in the US to protect the big three's memory profits.

These trade secrets might not be so valuable if they didn't try to monopolize the market. Fun thing is, they kept it secret instead of patenting it, but the process is out in the open now and anyone can use it.

On a final note, people can't be bought if you're the highest bidder. China doesn't have an extradition treaty so these guy ls will probably live the high life in China selling secrets because if they return home they'll be thrown in jail.

Oh noooo......wait, China is a larger market for electronics then the US. Whoops.

The cat has LONG escaped that bag, for so long in fact it came back and had kittens. As it is now, China can sell its products throughout the rest of the world and dominate the big 3. At worst, korea and the US would ban them. We all knew it was coming, and the future is now here. By 2030 CXMT will have a majority share of the DRAM market, YTMC the storage market, and the big 3 will be begging for bailouts.

 

[pnntmp]

I wonder what's the purpose of this article.

China stealing everything is the default state of affairs. When you see anything Chinese, you know it's stolen.
China stealing again for a zillion-th time is not newsworthy.

If you stumble upon something they did without stealing, immediately let us know. Actually, don't do it immediately - triple check it first.

 

[yRaz]

Oh noooo......wait, China is a larger market for electronics then the US. Whoops.

The cat has LONG escaped that bag, for so long in fact it came back and had kittens. As it is now, China can sell its products throughout the rest of the world and dominate the big 3. At worst, korea and the US would ban them. We all knew it was coming, and the future is now here. By 2030 CXMT will have a majority share of the DRAM market, YTMC the storage market, and the big 3 will be begging for bailouts.

I don't get what you're trying to say, are you agreeing with me while trying to act like what I said was wrong?

 

[jwdR311]

Heh, this is SOP for China is it not? Let someone else spend the money and effort doing the R&D, then 'borrow' and build it.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I don't get what you're trying to say, are you agreeing with me while trying to act like what I said was wrong?

It's pretty obvious, the US is incapable of stopping CXMT. There are far more market a that will buy Chinese regardless, and the big 3 are going to get wrecked HARD as a result.

 

[yRaz]

It's pretty obvious, the US is incapable of stopping CXMT. There are far more market a that will buy Chinese regardless, and the big 3 are going to get wrecked HARD as a result.

Well I hope you're right, but they'll sit on the billions they've already made and make deals with OEMs where they supply chips to them. Much like how lots of the software legislation in the EU bleeds over to the US like right to repair, it's cheaper to make 1 SKU that complies with as many markets as possible in the world than multiple SKUs.

The big three do need their nuts tied in a knot, though. If Chinese manufacturers mean long time stable and competitive pricing, im fine with it. But this whole "ban all our competitors" is getting exhausting and annoying.

And I really want someone to correct me if I'm wrong on this, I want to know how someone can install software on a stick of ram to spy on people and create vulnerabilities. I thought on a fundamental level that how parts like this were designed made it impossible to do that. everything that goes in and out of a memory chip is made by the memory controller. There is no microcode stored in them, they're just an empty tank to store 1s and 0s. And that due to how memory works, you can see all the blocks and what's in them. if there was some block with fishy code in it, it would create memory faults and errors and be functionally unusable.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Well I hope you're right, but they'll sit on the billions they've already made and make deals with OEMs where they supply chips to them. Much like how lots of the software legislation in the EU bleeds over to the US like right to repair, it's cheaper to make 1 SKU that complies with as many markets as possible in the world than multiple SKUs.

The big three do need their nuts tied in a knot, though. If Chinese manufacturers mean long time stable and competitive pricing, im fine with it. But this whole "ban all our competitors" is getting exhausting and annoying.

And I really want someone to correct me if I'm wrong on this, I want to know how someone can install software on a stick of ram to spy on people and create vulnerabilities. I thought on a fundamental level that how parts like this were designed made it impossible to do that. everything that goes in and out of a memory chip is made by the memory controller. There is no microcode stored in them, they're just an empty tank to store 1s and 0s. And that due to how memory works, you can see all the blocks and what's in them. if there was some block with fishy code in it, it would create memory faults and errors and be functionally unusable.

Well look at it this way: China is the single largest electronics market. So right off the bat, if the US band CXMT, China can just ban crucial and CXMT will be better off. If the US gets Korea to comply, then China can cut off all big 3 and move memory requirements internally.

Then you have BRICS. Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa. All of them will happily buy CXMT. India is next to China in economic growth.

Then you have the rest of the world. The Middle East won't listen to the US, obviously. SE asia will happily gobble up CXMT as well, except maybe japan. Europe will buy it no issue.

Look at Huawei. The US got the five eyes on board ( australia, Canada, New Zealand, the uk) on board, but much of the rest of Europe still uses Huawei telecommunications equipment. And in all these countries, except the US, you can still buy Huawei consumer goods like phones.

In the event of the us getting CXMT banned, it will most likely only be us and the Koreans involved. But even if they get the five eyes, parts of West Europe, and japan, CXMT will still have well over half the global electronics market available to them, including the growth market sof South America and Asia. The US has lost too much I fluence to effectively stop China, and they were warned of this when the first Chinese trade bans with ASML were announced.

 

[NumberNine]

They'll use every trick in in the book and every accusation that seems even vaguely plausible against CXMT to ensure the free market remains locked down nice and tight.

 

[Eldrach]

At the same time we're overlooking that the big three are price fixing again - which they have been sentenced for before.
I feel no pity for them tbh - they are a big part of ruining the consumer market, just like Nvidia

 

[Axeia]

Look at Huawei. The US got the five eyes on board ( australia, Canada, New Zealand, the uk) on board, but much of the rest of Europe still uses Huawei telecommunications equipment. And in all these countries, except the US, you can still buy Huawei consumer goods like phones.

Europe mostly went along with it for telecommunications equipment.

With the current US-EU relationship however I wouldn't count on the EU/Europe paying whatever the US is saying much heed though. The Greenland thing, the tariffs, etc etc kinda burned through whatever goodwill there was.
Not to mention if it's just memory chips themselves I don't think much of a 'national security' other than trying to prevent China from becoming a big player can be made. Afaik the chips themselves are pretty dumb, if there's any logic for remote disabling or spying or anything like that to be done I'm pretty sure it would have to be at a higher level and that can still be done by non-Chinese companies.

--

South Korea is real mad, and that's not very surprising. SK Hynix and Samsung are two of the big three, and the two bigger ones. They make up for a huge chunk of South Korea's GDP.

 

[poohbear]

The irony is that Samsung did this to Japanese semiconductor companies back in the 80s and 90s. With that said, China is notorious for intellectual copyright to the point they dont think its even a crime. "We copied them, that takes skill & effort!" is their mindset.

 

[OortCloud]

Given the memory cartel at the moment, I'm struggling to have any sympathy for Samsung...

 

[p51d007]

One thing the Chinese are good at, is REVERSE ENGINEERING!
Pretty much anything coming out of China is reverse engineered from
somewhere else. Sometimes it is better, most of the time it isn't.

 

[yRaz]

Given the memory cartel at the moment, I'm struggling to have any sympathy for Samsung...

Yeah, the memory situation the cartel made has made it financially viable for other countries to buy secrets from their employees to make their own products. This is one of those "people are only willing to pay so much before..." Situations.

 

[Rocky4040]

Seem rather odd that no one was able or willing to come forward with this until now. Once these new memory chip makers started making headway in the market out of no where we got someone proclaiming foul play happened. I mean it is most likely what happened but I find the timing rather to well time to cause trouble for these new chip makers and get them banned from selling in some countries.

I am thinking this was done by the big three to slow or stop these new chip makers form getting to far into their market. My best advice to the big three maybe focus on the consumer products more and stop ripping us off with fake shortages and price hikes. Just maybe people would not buy form these new chip makers but when the big three seem to only see dollar signs from the AI data centers.

Maybe I am way off base but I find the timing of this pretty suspicious. I guess if I was going to buy DDR5 I should have picked some of the shiny new chip maker memory because it seems the big three do not want to sell to us any more.

 

[jbright]

Seven years for the guy who leaked it, and CXMT gets to keep being China's biggest DRAM maker — that's quite the risk/reward ratio for corporate espionage.

 

[michiel81]

And this surprises anyone? If they had managed to reverse engineer the asml machine they would have skipped that also. All in the name of the CCP.

 

[Burty117]

Where’s the usual commenter on here that ardently defends mega corps?

Surprised he’s not here ranting about CXMT.

Speaking of, I’m sure I was told “the big three cannot increase capacity at speed” yet here’s CXMT who’s getting close to Micron levels of output.

 

[Herald92]

Fact is not only China is catching and surpassing everyone in terms of technology but it's also surpassing everyone in terms of production volume, and it's doing it FAST ... the rest is pure COPE propaganda much like this article .

 

[LordVile95]

it's going to get banned in the US to protect the big three's memory profits.

These trade secrets might not be so valuable if they didn't try to monopolize the market. Fun thing is, they kept it secret instead of patenting it, but the process is out in the open now and anyone can use it.

On a final note, people can't be bought if you're the highest bidder. China doesn't have an extradition treaty so these guy ls will probably live the high life in China selling secrets because if they return home they'll be thrown in jail.

If American wants to ban it and keep the DRAM cartel happy then great, cheaper RAM for the rest of us

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Where’s the usual commenter on here that ardently defends mega corps?

Surprised he’s not here ranting about CXMT.

Speaking of, I’m sure I was told “the big three cannot increase capacity at speed” yet here’s CXMT who’s getting close to Micron levels of output.

Yeah, it's amazing; when you don't have to consider environmental restrictions, government restrictions, IP law, NIMBYism, endless lawsuits, and all other sorts of roadblocks western countries have, how fast you can build new industry.

Did you even consider that before whining about capitalism again?

 

[Hotlynx16]

That is how China has developed most of it's tech by stealing from the US and others! They have been sending Spy college students to the US for Years!