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

[ajekb78]

Good luck with that. Know-how is a notoriously difficult form of IP to protect: you can have an NDA with your employee, but if they move to China, break the NDA and tell your rival everything then you're probably SOL.

 

[maxxcool7421]

Let's be super clear about this, China doesn't actually care about making money from the US. Instead This is all about getting memory intellectual property under the belt so that they can feed their own internal customers.. selling stuff to the outside world is just a bonus. If that gets banned they won't care... Because internally their own AI farms, their own data centers are going to consume every single chip they ever produce if they can't sell anything outside the border.... But as we've all seen with Nvidia, the gray market will push that product anywhere There is going to be a paying customer so banning it won't do any good at all. But again I stress this is all about China becoming independent from any other country... And since they have all of the raw materials to make everything they need in the their own border... Nothing we do matters. China is essentially only about two PC generations behind in tech and manufacturing.. and can make everything they will ever need.
They win..

 

[toooooot]

Seriously, is there ANYONE here surprised?
Their entire success is built on the most shameless theft.

 

[Liranan]

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.

The only reason they know that it's 'possible' to install spyware on RAM stick is because they're doing it themselves (NSA and Cisco spyware) or they're lying and desperate to protect the profits of the three criminals.

 

[Burty117]

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?

Ah yeah, you're right, I didn't consider anything at all, nothing whatsoever, I just said it with zero thought, apologies oh great one, I will not do any better next time, because I simply cannot use more than a single brain cell at a time.

Anyway now all the sarcasm is out the way, the current memory cartel are based in South Korea or Taiwan, they don't seem to struggle building fabs in those countries, TSMC continuously builds new fabrication plants (fabs) in Taiwan, often having 8 to 10 new domestic facilities under construction or starting development simultaneously in a single year to meet surging demand.

Also, my complaints look like I’m whining about capitalism, when actually, I’m complaining about unrestricted capitalism, the fact we no longer do anything about monopolies or cartels, we simply just let everything get worse and accept little to no competition in certain markets is what I’m really complaining about.

 

[ZedRM]

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

And what about the rest of the world? The USA is the only market for trade.

 

[yRaz]

And what about the rest of the world? The USA is the only market for trade.

As someone who lives in the US I don't really care if they do business in the rest of the world. I want the US to stop banning competitively priced products to protect monopolies. Capitalism and the free market don't exist in the US anymore.

 

[BadThad]

The vast majority of China's tech is stolen.

 

[Tantor]

I doubt CXMT stole everything. The Chinese excel at manufacturing tech, and these 'recipe plans' are right up their alley. Chinese determination is truly frightening. CXMT started in 2016 and by 2017 had built a $7 billion fab. (See Wikipedia)

It's funny to see Asian companies like Samsung complain about competition. They were handed US technology in the 1980's.

 

[Luay]

Here we go again with this anti-China propaganda. Let's indulge it and show what the article says in its own words:

CXMT stole a document, skipped a decade in R&D, and became China's biggest memory maker. If it were that easy, everyone with a spy camera would be running a fab.

A "recipe" tells you what to do. It doesn't tell you how to get it right. Years, money, sweat and blood go into figuring out why one batch comes out fine and the next one doesn't. That happens on the factory floor, and it doesn't fit in a document that can be stolen.

The article contradicts itself while making the case. Going from 40,000 wafers to 720,000 isn't something paperwork does for you. And the story comes from one man, relayed secondhand, who is currently serving seven years. Of course CXMT doesn't get to respond. God forbid we actually do our due diligence.

The "stolen document" was for 18-nanometer chips, by the way. Everything CXMT ships today came after that. Did the document come with a chapter on what to build next, or did they figure that part out themselves?

Here's another point made in the comments that's worth repeating, where do they think that DDR5 shortage came from? The big three moved their capacity to HBM because AI pays better, walked away from the memory the rest of us actually buy, and now act surprised that someone else is selling it. CXMT didn't take that market. It was handed over.

Then read the last paragraph again. It stops talking about the case, or how Samsung might actually prosecute it, and starts talking about blocking foreign products at the US border. That's not how you end a report on a trial. That's how you end a pitch for a trade war. The story is about theft, but the ask is a ban on a competitor. It doesn't add up and the end reveals the intention.

We've been breathing this BS so long that we stopped smelling it. How about some self-esteem?

 

[ZedRM]

The vast majority of China's tech is stolen.

A lot less than you think.

 

[ZedRM]

Here we go again with this anti-China propaganda. Let's indulge it and show what the article says in its own words:

CXMT stole a document, skipped a decade in R&D, and became China's biggest memory maker. If it were that easy, everyone with a spy camera would be running a fab.

A "recipe" tells you what to do. It doesn't tell you how to get it right. Years, money, sweat and blood go into figuring out why one batch comes out fine and the next one doesn't. That happens on the factory floor, and it doesn't fit in a document that can be stolen.

The article contradicts itself while making the case. Going from 40,000 wafers to 720,000 isn't something paperwork does for you. And the story comes from one man, relayed secondhand, who is currently serving seven years. Of course CXMT doesn't get to respond. God forbid we actually do our due diligence.

The "stolen document" was for 18-nanometer chips, by the way. Everything CXMT ships today came after that. Did the document come with a chapter on what to build next, or did they figure that part out themselves?

Here's another point made in the comments that's worth repeating, where do they think that DDR5 shortage came from? The big three moved their capacity to HBM because AI pays better, walked away from the memory the rest of us actually buy, and now act surprised that someone else is selling it. CXMT didn't take that market. It was handed over.

Then read the last paragraph again. It stops talking about the case, or how Samsung might actually prosecute it, and starts talking about blocking foreign products at the US border. That's not how you end a report on a trial. That's how you end a pitch for a trade war. The story is about theft, but the ask is a ban on a competitor. It doesn't add up and the end reveals the intention.

We've been breathing this BS so long that we stopped smelling it. How about some self-esteem?

Let's not make excuses, China is known to have outright stolen tech they now mass produce. They have also reverse engineered many technologies they did not originally develop. However, the Chinese have also made great progress in many area's of technology and science no one else has. What China should be doing is sharing what they have developed freely, or at least inexpensively. That is what CXMT appears to be doing. So I say let them as long as the prices are low and the quality is good.

 

[BadThad]

A lot less than you think.

Ok Chairman Mao! lololol