Report: Tsinghua takes control of XMC
The move will increase the size of the Tsinghua conglomerate and will also provide manufacturing capacity. The newly merged company is being renamed as Changjiang Storage Co. Ltd., according to the Bloomberg report, which referenced an email from Tsinghua’s billionaire chairman Weiguo Zhao as its source. ChiangJiang translates as Yangtze River.
Zhao oversaw the acquisition of RDA Microelectronics and Spreadtrum Communications has also expressed interest in Micron Technology Inc. (Boise, Idaho) and Mediatek Inc. (Tsingchu, Taiwan). Unisplendor, the Hong Kong-based subsidiary of Tsinghua Unigroup changed its mind about an investment in Western Digital after a decision by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to investigate the proposed investment.
XMC started out as an attempt by the local Wuhan civil authority to get into semiconductor manufacturing and it put the management of the fab out to SMIC who characterized it as a foundry. It however spent much of its time doing volume NOR flash and image sensor fabrication.
Earlier this year XMC was reported to have broken ground on a wafer fab designed for the production of 3D NAND flash memory. This wafer fab is expected to begin volume production in 2018 with an eventually capacity of 200,000 wafers per month.
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