Friday, December 16th 2022

YMTC Could Abandon Market for 3D NAND Flash by 2024 Following US Government's Decision to Place It on Entity List, Says TrendForce
Global market intelligence firm TrendForce states that Chinese memory manufacturer YMTC is now at risk of exiting the market for 3D NAND Flash products by 2024 following its formal placement on the Entity List of the US Commerce Department on December 15. From this point forward, the Commerce Department will be reviewing and approving individual transactions related to the exportation, re-exportation, and sales of equipment, technologies, and other related goods from the US to YMTC. With acquisitions of equipment parts and technical support from its US partners becoming very difficult and prolonged, YMTC is going to be severely constrained from raising its bit output. Hence, its foothold on the market for 3D NAND Flash products is expected to weaken as time goes by.
TrendForce points out that without the support of the key equipment providers, YMTC is now facing a huge technical obstacle in the development of its latest 3D NAND Flash technology known as Xtacking 3.0. In particular, raising yield rate for the 128L and 232L processes is going to be extremely challenging for the Chinese memory manufacturer. Taking account of this latest escalation in the US-China trade dispute, TrendForce has further corrected down its projections on YMTC's supply bit growth rate and the total NAND Flash supply bit growth rate for next year. YMTC supply bits were initially forecasted to grow by 60% YoY for 2023. However, there was a massive downward correction that put its growth rate at just 18%. Now, YMTC is forecasted to post a YoY decline of 7%, which is a complete reversal from the earlier projections.International Clients Are Gradually Reallocating Orders to Other NAND Flash Suppliers
Besides the impact of the Entity List on YMTC's output growth, TrendForce has also observed that NAND Flash buyers outside of China now harbor significant reservations about adopting YMTC's technology. A US-based smartphone brand has hold off on procuring mobile storage solutions from YMTC. At the same time, PC OEMs that were previously going to qualify YMTC's client SSDs have temporarily halted the customer sampling and adoption process. Based on the latest investigation, TrendForce believes that YMTC will likely be limited to operating only within Mainland China in the future. Moreover, since the Chinese memory manufacturer is being seriously hindered in its efforts to advance towards higher-layer 3D NAND technologies, it will eventually lose out on opportunities to gain more market share via capacity expansion activities.
After its placement on the Entity List, YMTC could be further prevented from acquiring the critical equipment if the US government opts to broaden the scope of its export control rules. For instance, there is a likelihood that Dutch and Japanese equipment providers will join the US sanction regime and stop selling DUV immersion lithography systems to Chinese customers.
TrendForce notes that by 2024, YMTC's competitors will have transitioned to the 2XX-L generation for their primary 3D NAND processes. They might even start manufacturing NAND Flash products that have a layer count that is approaching the 300 threshold. Conversely, YMTC will have gradually lost its cost competitiveness due to technological stagnation, and the erosion of its market share will continue. To avoid this fate, YMTC will have to find ways to get delisted. TrendForce is also not ruling out other alternative paths for YMTC as well. For instance, the company can go back to manufacturing 2D NAND Flash, or it can transform into a supplier for logic ICs that are made with mature process technologies.
Supply-Demand Dynamics of NAND Flash Market Is Now Expected to Improve in 2H23 and Thereby Help Stabilize Overall NAND Flash ASP
Since YMTC's YoY supply bit growth rate for 2023 has been drastically revised to negative 7%, the YoY growth rate of the total NAND Flash supply bits in the same year has been lowered as well to 20.2%. Correspondingly, the sufficiency ratio of the whole NAND Flash market for the entire 2023 has been revised to 2.3% from the original projection of 3.6%. Besides the moderation in supply bit growth, TrendForce is also optimistic that procurements will pick up for enterprise SSDs thanks to the price elasticity of demand. Moreover, TrendForce is not ruling out the possibility that the overall NAND Flash supply will start to tighten in 2H23. Electronics brands (OEMs) could begin ramping up NAND Flash procurements ahead of time in 2Q23. The rising demand, in turn, could lead to a stabilization of NAND Flash prices during 2Q23 and an eventual rebound in the overall NAND Flash ASP starting in 3Q23.
TrendForce points out that without the support of the key equipment providers, YMTC is now facing a huge technical obstacle in the development of its latest 3D NAND Flash technology known as Xtacking 3.0. In particular, raising yield rate for the 128L and 232L processes is going to be extremely challenging for the Chinese memory manufacturer. Taking account of this latest escalation in the US-China trade dispute, TrendForce has further corrected down its projections on YMTC's supply bit growth rate and the total NAND Flash supply bit growth rate for next year. YMTC supply bits were initially forecasted to grow by 60% YoY for 2023. However, there was a massive downward correction that put its growth rate at just 18%. Now, YMTC is forecasted to post a YoY decline of 7%, which is a complete reversal from the earlier projections.International Clients Are Gradually Reallocating Orders to Other NAND Flash Suppliers
Besides the impact of the Entity List on YMTC's output growth, TrendForce has also observed that NAND Flash buyers outside of China now harbor significant reservations about adopting YMTC's technology. A US-based smartphone brand has hold off on procuring mobile storage solutions from YMTC. At the same time, PC OEMs that were previously going to qualify YMTC's client SSDs have temporarily halted the customer sampling and adoption process. Based on the latest investigation, TrendForce believes that YMTC will likely be limited to operating only within Mainland China in the future. Moreover, since the Chinese memory manufacturer is being seriously hindered in its efforts to advance towards higher-layer 3D NAND technologies, it will eventually lose out on opportunities to gain more market share via capacity expansion activities.
After its placement on the Entity List, YMTC could be further prevented from acquiring the critical equipment if the US government opts to broaden the scope of its export control rules. For instance, there is a likelihood that Dutch and Japanese equipment providers will join the US sanction regime and stop selling DUV immersion lithography systems to Chinese customers.
TrendForce notes that by 2024, YMTC's competitors will have transitioned to the 2XX-L generation for their primary 3D NAND processes. They might even start manufacturing NAND Flash products that have a layer count that is approaching the 300 threshold. Conversely, YMTC will have gradually lost its cost competitiveness due to technological stagnation, and the erosion of its market share will continue. To avoid this fate, YMTC will have to find ways to get delisted. TrendForce is also not ruling out other alternative paths for YMTC as well. For instance, the company can go back to manufacturing 2D NAND Flash, or it can transform into a supplier for logic ICs that are made with mature process technologies.
Supply-Demand Dynamics of NAND Flash Market Is Now Expected to Improve in 2H23 and Thereby Help Stabilize Overall NAND Flash ASP
Since YMTC's YoY supply bit growth rate for 2023 has been drastically revised to negative 7%, the YoY growth rate of the total NAND Flash supply bits in the same year has been lowered as well to 20.2%. Correspondingly, the sufficiency ratio of the whole NAND Flash market for the entire 2023 has been revised to 2.3% from the original projection of 3.6%. Besides the moderation in supply bit growth, TrendForce is also optimistic that procurements will pick up for enterprise SSDs thanks to the price elasticity of demand. Moreover, TrendForce is not ruling out the possibility that the overall NAND Flash supply will start to tighten in 2H23. Electronics brands (OEMs) could begin ramping up NAND Flash procurements ahead of time in 2Q23. The rising demand, in turn, could lead to a stabilization of NAND Flash prices during 2Q23 and an eventual rebound in the overall NAND Flash ASP starting in 3Q23.
40 Comments on YMTC Could Abandon Market for 3D NAND Flash by 2024 Following US Government's Decision to Place It on Entity List, Says TrendForce
Even in the worst case like COVID for example where you have a rapidly evolving virus the multiple permutations of the vaccine has shown that in over a billion administered shots it was effective at reducing all negative outcomes of covid ranging from spread to symptoms to death within 100 mutations of the original strain.
I don't have tabs on what every public official says but this circles right around to my prior point. On the whole the medical community has been pretty clear with the efficacy of vaccines. If there are a few instances where a public official misspoke, that would be understandable given that we are all human. That doesn't change the bigger picture. This reminds of those that were attacking the legitimacy of medical professionals because said accusers conflated statements early on in the COVID pandemic about not purchasing masks as if to mean that masks weren't effective. In reality masks are effective against COVID, those early statements were made to allow those in the medical field who need masks most to be able to obtain them. Yes, misinformation is false information without the knowledge that it is incorrect. It's an exact match to the description Disinformation is spreading information knowing it is incorrect. Typically misinformation starts from a source spreading disinformation.
The internet enables the spread of this kind of information on a massive scale. Everyone's racist uncle does not need to be heard by billions of people, that is not a guaranteed right. Instead the internet enables people like this as controversial content is often promoted on most platforms to drive profits. The added anonymity also emboldens people to say things they would not say in real life. Rules makes honest people they say, even a good man might rob a bank with the vault door left open and no one there. No one said it would be an insta-ban for a single instance of spreading misinformation. It would have to be particularly harmful for that to be the case.
You can have an effective multi-prong system in place to ensure free speech is protected as well as everyone else's rights.
One prong of that system might be limiting the scope of who sees a person's posts. If a person repeatedly trolls, spreads misinformation, or makes low effort posts and refuses to correct their behavior after being notified of their actions their comments can be limited to only being seen by their friends and those in similar groups and cannot be shared beyond the initial post.
IMO a lot of people should not be posting the entire world because the vast majority of people do not have anything of value to say. There needs to be a trust system in place so that people have to earn the right to post to broader and broader audiences. At a certain broadcast size (scope of the number of people that can see a post) individuals should be requires to provide ID and other documents, otherwise their posts will be limited in the number of people that can see or share them.
As to who decides what is true and what is false, that would preferably be done by a neutral 3rd party. That said the above given systems and other systems can be used to greatly mitigate the need for this. In addition, I do not believe there should be any "news" on social media as they avoid many regulations that regular news outlets have to go through. These are just systems that I'm thinking of on the spot, surely multi-billion dollar companies can create these systems. They don't because profits are priority. Unfortunately ignore only works when you are in the forum. If you are just browsing the news article though you still see ignored users.
Alternatively, I use the "add your own comment" button to navigate to the news article via the forums.
However for end users this is a bad news. Always more competition is better.
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/china-technology-theft-fbi-biggest-threat
www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-ally-stealing-western-ip-united-states
I'm going to list my counter points in the order which you wrote yours.
This is one of my heroes, Jonas Salk. I am not anti-vaxx. When I mentioned questionable vaccine efficacy, I was indeedd talking about the covid vaccine. The efficacy of the covid vaccine has had a very controversial effect, especially when it comes to disease prevention, communicability, and death. We are still too deep in the forest to distinguish the trees from it, that is- we are not far enough away from the pandemic to have perspective on the data as a whole. People who say the vaccine doesn't work or does work, I think is extreme.
"I don't have tabs on what every public official says but this circles right around to my prior point. On the whole the medical community has been pretty clear with the efficacy of vaccines. If there are a few instances where a public official misspoke, that would be understandable given that we are all human."
Here is where I disagree with you the most. The tabs on public officials I was mentioning was our commander in chief, head of the CDC, Faucci, and corporate media. Take these two examples hereand here. Those are the highest ranking people in society. They don't mis-speak continuously, they double down. They continuously spoke the "not-truth", and I think there is a word for "not-the-truth".
As for masks, you and I both agree that masks do work to prevent particulate from being spread so rapidly. A good distinction is that N-95 have the highest percentage of efficacy for normal consumer masks. I also agree about the botched misinformation that those leaders said about masks causing mass confusion toward the efficacy. However, you are comparing apples and oranges when talking about mask efficacy and experimental vaccines shown not to work as described like in the links above.
"Yes, misinformation is false information without the knowledge that it is incorrect."
In principle your definition is 100% correct, however in the popular colloquial-vernacular, disseminating misinformation is something associated with having an agenda whilst possibly simutanesouly inciting an agenda that requires deception and obfuscation. Which I would would not define as being wrong or ignorant. Just as I tried to more precisely define the bad actors you were referring to before, instead of lumping them into one category, being wrong for example Terminator starred Selvestor Stalone not Arnold Schwarzenegger or being ignorant: "my ethnicity/race/religion is superior to X ethnicity". These examples are of being incorrect and ignorant, here is an example of misinformation: "The cornoa-virus vaccine makes women infertile and turns your future babies into reptiles" or "sale Apple stock NOW! ITS GOING DOWN". This is what misinformation is, this is my disntction- I hope I'm not "disseminating misinformation"-- aka being wrong about something.
Now to switch gears and talk about the freedom of expression: " Everyone's racist uncle does not need to be heard by billions of people, that is not a guaranteed right." The united states constitution and supreme court have a long precedent of disagreement with you. I asked before if you knew who Ira Glasser was. He was a Jewish man from holocaust surviving family memembers who was the head of the ACLU and faught for the rights of Neo-Nazi's right to freely express themselves in a Jewish town, doing blatantly offensive and terrible a antisemitic parade. He wasn't advocating for them or their message, but for the freedom of speech and expression that America has been so famous for to this day. We still have the most freedom of expression when compared to other western countries, however more and more citizens want to have a sanitized version of reality where the people who have as you put it "controversial" opinions are silenced from discourse. Living in authoritarian countries has made me cherish our freedoms even more.
Just like browsing the web, talking with people in real life, or watching TV- if you don't like something or someone, you can just not give that thing your attention or time. To excommunicate someone who doesn't follow what you or I think or "know" to be true or accurate is a slippery slope. An example of this is to your point "an independent 3rd party". Tik-Tok and other big-tech like facebook claim to be moderated by third party neutral entities. However like we saw with Matt Taibbi and the twitter files, sometimes that independent third party is the actual government in power and manipulating the control of information, like the Hunter Biden laptop story. Who should be banned for that? The president? The apparatus that tried to manipulate and control the "controversial" information? Who gets to decide what is controversial- the independent third party like the FBI or DNC/GOP? Slippery slope.
We can never depend on neutral third parties to tell us what is or isn't real, like you said, people are human, they make mistakes. An important part of living and participating in a democratic society is being an informed citizen, if you remove the responsibility from yourself to determine what is and isn't real then reduces your capacity to think critically about issues. An example of this is the WMDs from the Iraq war or the gulf of Tonkin. The people in the highest authority and leaders with the most power lied to us while looking directly in our eyes.
I'm not an anarchist, I agree with you that there should be rules. However those rules should respect the constitution fist and foremost as it is our foundation and moral compass for what is truly patriotic and American. The ex twitter CEO said that "we won't be bound by the first amendment". I don't think people realize who are angry about seeing a flat earther video- that this is the most important right to a free society- the ability to be wrong- just as it is our right to tell that person they are wrong and why. The struggle against misinformation and ignorance lies in what you and I are doing, disagreeing but taking the time to learn from each other.
Thank you for your responses man.
As for Ukraine, the west is largely part of creating that mess:
www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/putin-ukraine-nato.html
And obviously nobody called it a humanitarian mess when the bombs fell over Baghdad either, and if the likes of Biden calls for Putin to be sent to Hague then so would also all living US presidents have to. If there is to be principles but most have no clue about what it means.
But we can agree on one thing at least. Down with dictators, but then again our own capitalists love almost all of them. If you start a business and for instance need engineers you can find more of them in Asia rather than here. But above all they have a decimated workforce which is not allowed to ask for too much.
China’s schoolkids beat American students in all academic categories
The academic performance of American schoolchildren hasn't budged in two decades, despite billions of dollars in increased funding.
bigthink.com/the-present/pisa-test-china
Perhaps one party shouldn't sell conspiracies and religion to the public? This comes at a high cost just like especially silly theocracies keep women out of the workforce.