A group of former Samsung bosses and employees have been indicted in South Korea for leaking 10-nanometre DRAM technology to China, according to the tech news-site Neowin, which cited a South Korean news outlet known as The Elec.
The Information Technology Crime Investigation Department at the Seoul central prosecutors’ office arrested an executive at China’s Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT) who is a former Samsung Electronics employee.
The person “is accused of having overseen the development of 10-nanometre DRAM technology at CXMT. In addition, four other CXMT employees have also been arrested as part of the investigation,” the report said.
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DRAM stands for Dynamic Random-Access Memory and is a type of computer chip memory format that stores bits of data in a memory cell.
Neowin said CXMT has been accused of recruiting key executives and engineers from Samsung, who allegedly transferred proprietary DRAM tech to their new employer.
“These actions are said to have contributed to the mass production of China’s first domestically developed DRAM in 2023, reportedly based on technology misappropriated from Samsung.”
A former Samsung Electronics researcher was alleged to have transferred hundreds of handwritten documents detailing Samsung’s 10nm DRAM tech to CXMT after joining the company in 2016.
“Prosecutors say the financial damage to the country’s semiconductors could amount to billions of dollars.”
The prosecutors allege that the Chinese government invested more than $1.7 billion in CXMT as it became the country’s “first and only domestic DRAM producer.”
News of the leak comes as the memory-chip market is experiencing a severe shortage driven by booming demand from the artificial intelligence boom, which has caused prices to skyrocket and companies to sign long-term supply contracts.
And this is not the first time the Korean chip giant has suffered this problem. Prosecutors launched a similar case in September last year against engineers accused of using Samsung chip tech to make 20nm memory chips at a plant in southern China.
- Jim Pollard
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