Korean media interpret Samsung and SK hynix joining an Applied Materials research center in the US as a reaction to China's CXMT. Taiwan's Liberty Times separately carried an analysis calling CXMT's 4F2 technology a paper tiger; Chinese claims are hard to verify from outside.
Applied Materials unveiled on October 12 (US time) the EPIC Center in Sunnyvale, California, a facility with total planned investment of 5 billion dollars. Per Newspim and Business Korea, Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, TSMC, Intel and Micron are founding partners, with Broadcom, Advantest and Kioxia plus Stanford and UC Berkeley also taking part. The building covers about 55,700 square meters, of which 16,200 are advanced cleanroom.
광고 문의 · 300×250The aim is to speed commercialization of HBM, advanced process and packaging technology. Reports say Samsung will work on advanced logic, packaging and new materials with patterning, etching and deposition, while SK hynix will study HBM, DRAM, NAND and 3D packaging. The 5 billion dollars is to be spent in stages as customer projects proceed, and no completion date was given. The center itself has not been described as aimed at any country; the CXMT framing is the press's interpretation.
CXMT's 4F2 card
The backdrop is a CXMT announcement. According to Newspim, CXMT presented a 4F2 DRAM cell structure with vertical transistors at a Shanghai chip and chiplet conference on October 10 and said it would release a server DDR5 RDIMM using it within the year. The 4F2 layout shrinks cell area by about one third compared with the mainstream 6F2. Media reported that shares of Samsung, SK hynix and Micron fell together on October 12.
Korean experts, however, caution against overreading. Professor Lee Jong-hwan of Sangmyung University told Newspim that the structure is very hard to manufacture and its reliability unproven, so the year-end product may be a prototype or small-volume run. Money Today reported industry estimates that CXMT trails the leaders by about three years and has announced no HBM mass production. Samsung showed a 4F2 test chip at ISSCC in February and SK hynix presented vertical-gate 4F2 research at VLSI in June, so Korean makers are working on the same structure.
The paper-tiger analysis carried by Liberty Times fits that framing: a lab-grade design is not the same as high-yield volume production, and US equipment export controls constrain access to advanced tools. We could not check the original article directly, so its detailed arguments are not repeated here. For its part, China's side stresses technical progress and the year-end launch plan, and Omdia puts CXMT's DRAM revenue share at 9.4 percent in the second quarter, up from 1.8 percent in 2022.
Assessment: volume may matter more than technology
The long-term risk experts most often cite is not 4F2 itself but expanding commodity DRAM output that could pressure prices and margins; in HBM most views see a clear Korean lead. How much the alliance will achieve, and how CXMT's year-end product performs and qualifies with customers, remain uncertain. Yield data and post-launch pricing will be the real tests.
