Although the news that China has taken the lead in mass production of DRAM within a year has triggered fluctuations in global stock markets, global semiconductor companies including Samsung Electronics have formed a research and development alliance to fight back. Global semiconductor equipment company Applied Materials (AMAT) has spent US$5 billion to launch the Silicon Valley EPIC Center project in partnership with Samsung, SK Hynix, TSMC and Intel.
Applied Materials unveiled the EPIC Center in Sunnyvale, California, USA, a research and development collaboration center that brings together major semiconductor companies such as Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. In particular, Samsung Electronics cooperated with Huida and Advanced Micro Devices to release advanced semiconductor products, demonstrating its status and strength as a top memory semiconductor company.
With a total investment of US$5 billion, the EPIC Center is the world's largest joint R&D center for semiconductor process technology and manufacturing equipment. Founding partners including Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, TSMC, Intel and Micron, as well as innovative partners such as Broadcom, Advantest, Screen, Kioxia and Besi, as well as major universities such as Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, will collaborate at the EPIC Center.
SK Hynix President and CEO Kwak No-Jung said that he intends to respond to major technological turning points in the fields of high bandwidth memory (HBM), DRAM and NAND through cooperation with Applied Materials.
This all-round global alliance is closely related to China's pursuit of transcending semiconductor independence and achieving dominance. Due to U.S. export controls on advanced technologies, technological exchanges between China and Western countries have actually been hindered. However, under the leadership of the government, China is actively breaking through this restriction and rapidly improving its competitiveness.
For example, when the United States banned the Dutch company ASML from exporting extreme ultraviolet (EUV) equipment to China, China developed its own deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography equipment to improve its competitiveness in the field of fine processes.
Therefore, China Changxin Memory, known as China's leading DRAM manufacturer, has shown significant growth momentum and recently announced the mass production of the next generation mobile DRAM-LPDDR6. The company also announced that it will be the first to launch server memory DDR5 RDIMM using the next-generation DRAM architecture (4F²) within the year. However, manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have not yet announced mass production plans for this architecture.
According to data from market research companies such as Counterpoint Research, in the second quarter of this year, Samsung Electronics accounted for 39% and 29.3% of the global DRAM market and NAND market respectively, ranking first. Changxin Storage's market share is 10%, more than doubled from the same period last year (4%), further consolidating its leading position.
The market remains volatile despite industry insiders raising questions about quality and other factors. After the news of the mass production of Changxin Storage came out, the stock prices of Micron Technology, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix all fell sharply.
In response, market leader Samsung Electronics announced the results of cooperation with the global artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor industry, including Huida and AMD, at the "Open Computing Project (OCP) Global Summit" that opened in San Jose, California, on October 12, 2026. Samsung introduced its technological competitiveness, including foundry processes such as 2-nanometer GAA wafers, Groq language processing unit (LPU) wafers and Nvidia Groq 3 LPX systems, as well as cases of cooperation with global artificial intelligence companies.
Samsung has teamed up with AMD to launch a plan to use Compute Express Link (CXL) technology to break through the memory capacity limitations of existing systems. This project is significant because it represents an expansion of the cooperation between the two parties, aiming to verify the performance of the technology in real system environments and improve the operational efficiency of artificial intelligence infrastructure. Samsung Electronics has also demonstrated an open collaboration strategy to jointly design artificial intelligence systems with global customers and partners and verify the technology in real-world environments.
