Summary:
A South Korean court revealed that Chinese memory manufacturer ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) systematically planned to use stolen Samsung intellectual property to build its dynamic random access memory (DRAM) technology. According to testimony from former Samsung engineer Jeon, CXMT leaders intended from the company's inception to acquire Samsung's Process Recipe Plan rather than develop technology through independent research.
Jeon, who worked at Samsung for 28 years before joining CXMT around 2016, received a seven year prison sentence for illegally obtaining a 600 step fabrication recipe, specifically targeting Samsung's 18nm class node. While a process recipe requires compatible tools and reverse engineering to fully replicate transistor designs, obtaining one saves years of trial and error in semiconductor manufacturing.
The stolen intellectual property enabled CXMT to rapidly accelerate its production timeline, reaching mass production of DDR4 memory on a 22nm node in 2019 and an 18nm node in 2023.
[https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/cxmt-planned-to-use-stolen-samsung-ip-to-develop-its-dram-court-hears-former-samsung-engineer-who-jumped-to-chinese-memory-maker-now-behind-bars](https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/cxmt-planned-to-use-stolen-samsung-ip-to-develop-its-dram-court-hears-former-samsung-engineer-who-jumped-to-chinese-memory-maker-now-behind-bars)