Huawei eyes DRAM production to combat memory shortage: report

Huawei is reportedly building a 12-inch DRAM wafer plant in Shenzhen, China, with partner Swaysure and government support, aiming to produce 140,000 wafers per month at 28nm process. The move addresses memory shortages exacerbated by U.S. export restrictions and supports China's goal of semiconductor self-sufficiency by 2030.

Huawei is reportedly set to build a 12-inch chip wafer plant in Shenzhen, China, in a bid to ease local pressure from the ongoing memory shortage. Huawei Central https://www.huaweicentral.com/huawei-building-12-inch-chip-wafer-plant/ cited a chip market insider on X Twitter https://x.com/SemiconductorsX/status/2075932441408356647?s=20 who claims Huawei has partnered with local memory chipmaker Swaysure Shenzhen Shengweixu to support the project. The Chinese government is also believed to have lent support for the project, with projected capacity around 140,000 wafers per month. A translation of a screenshot suggests the fab would initially focus on a 28-nanometer nm process capability and will “primarily” focus on dynamic random access memory DRAM . The memory shortage continues to bite, with manufacturers like SK Hynix https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/sk-hynix-predicts-ai-memory-gloom-until-2028/ pledging to build out capacity to meet surging demand. Beyond expanding manufacturing, other more creative workarounds have begun to emerge, like recycling older servers https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/meta-recycling-memory-is-magic-solution-to-ram-supply-misery/ , software optimizations https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/broadcom-says-the-memory-shortage-is-a-software-problem-and-vcf-is-the-fix/ , or boosting compression https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/turboquant-did-google-just-drop-a-compression-algorithm-capable-of-stemming-ramageddon/ . Huawei’s reported DRAM fab comes as hardware access in China is hampered by stringent U.S. export restrictions. DRAM memory chips of 18nm half-pitch or less and NAND flash memory chips with 128 layers or more are subject to Biden-era export rules https://www.bis.gov/press-release/commerce-implements-new-export-controls-advanced-computing-semiconductor-manufacturing-items-peoples . However, several U.S. lawmakers want stricter rules https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/us-lawmakers-want-memory-added-to-chip-controls/ relating to memory chips, warning that the ongoing shortage poses a bottleneck for AI development and utilization. China has been laying the groundwork to build out its own domestic semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, with the desire to be semiconductor self-sufficient by 2030 https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/china-targets-great-leap-forward-in-chip-self-sufficiency-with-ambitious-80-target-by-2030/ . Among the efforts to achieve that lofty goal are building its own version of ASML, the Dutch company and the world’s only supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography EUV machines that the entire semiconductor industry relies on. Huawei has significantly ramped up its own semiconductor efforts in recent years to take advantage of local demand for high-end, AI-centric hardware. Its cloud division recently unveiled its Agentic Infra stack https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/huawei-goes-all-in-on-agentic-ai-with-an-infra-stack-to-rival-nvidia/ , which looks to provide the means for Chinese enterprises to run AI agents at massive scale on homegrown silicon. In terms of chip development, Huawei recently showcased a scaling law it's using to design its own silicon, dubbed Tau τ https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/stop-shrinking-start-speeding-huawei-says-it-has-found-a-way-past-moores-law/ , which it argues the emphasis on transistor shrinking in logic development aka, Moore’s Law should be usurped by time scaling. Also known as “Her’s Law,” the vendor said it has already designed and mass-produced some 381 chips using the concept, with its proprietary LogicFolding used to shorten critical-path wiring and optimize the resistance of transistors and interconnects. For its apparent DRAM fab project in Shenzhen, Huawei’s partner Swaysure is a state-backed semiconductor company. Only believed to have been established in March 2022, it’s controlled by the Shenzhen municipal government and, like Huawei, is on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Entity List https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/12/05/2024-28267/additions-and-modifications-to-the-entity-list-removals-from-the-validated-end-user-veu-program . Huawei has traditionally been a fabless player in the semiconductor space, but added to its memory efforts with the Swaysure partnership. Huawei previously unveiled its HiBL 1.0 https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2025/9/hc-xu-keynote-speech proprietary, self-developed high-bandwidth memory HBM technology last September, which provides a capacity of 128 GB, supporting 1.6 Tb/s of memory bandwidth for its in-house Ascend 950 chips.