CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies)

Semiconductors · Memory Chips · China Tech

Milestone

CXMT mass-produces 5th-gen DRAM at 11.95nm without ASML EUV tools

Chip export controls were designed to block exactly this outcome, and layering older machines multiple times just routed around them.

• CXMT said its fifth-generation G5 DRAM platform entered mass production, reaching an 11.95nm active-area half-pitch without EUV lithography.
• CXMT, based in Hefei and listed on Shanghai's Star Market in 2026, is China's largest DRAM chipmaker and had never had access to ASML's export-restricted EUV scanners.
• The company used self-aligned quadruple patterning, exposing circuits four times with older deep ultraviolet scanners to mimic the resolution a single EUV pass would achieve.
• Two new 24-gigabit LPDDR5X mobile memory chips built on G5, holding 50% more data than prior products, are already shipping in Chinese flagship smartphones.
• CXMT says the G5 process yields at least 50% more chip dies per silicon wafer than its prior generation, a figure the company has not had independently audited.
• CXMT's global DRAM market share has reportedly crossed 10%, the first meaningful crack in over a decade of near-total dominance by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron.
• The milestone tests the core premise of chip export controls: that denying EUV tools would cap China's memory-chip capability rather than merely slow it down.