Three major semiconductor foundries in mainland China expand their chip manufacturing capabilities

According to the Taiwan Electronic Times website, there are three major semiconductor foundries in China, namely SMIC, Hua Hong Semiconductor and Huali Microelectronics. The three companies are currently expanding chip manufacturing capabilities.

The Chinese government has set the ambitious goal of developing the semiconductor industry. In 2016, the chip country’s production rate will be only 26.2%. By 2025, the national production rate will increase to 70%. This means that the domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity will also increase.

In semiconductor manufacturing, companies in mainland China are currently lagging behind. It is reported that TSMC, Gefangfang, Taiwan United Electric and other companies have built some factories in mainland China and are currently constructing a "12-inch wafer" chip factory. (The wafer factory processes wafers with a diameter of 12 inches. The larger the wafer area, The higher the production efficiency.

According to reports, due to the temporary lag in chip manufacturing technology, mainland Chinese mainland foundries are primarily targeting the automotive electronics chip market, which does not require the most advanced manufacturing processes.

Taiwan’s Electronics Times Research Department stated that the increase in production capacity of three chip foundries in mainland China will depend mainly on the domestic chip market.

In the global semiconductor foundry market, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. is Taiwan’s largest enterprise that accounts for half of the country. TSMC is the most important foundry of Apple’s chips. In recent years, the proportion of Apple’s orders has become higher and higher. Samsung Electronics has exerted tremendous pressure.

In the semiconductor manufacturing process, the “nano” number as the line width becomes the most important measure. The smaller the line width, the more the number of transistors integrated per unit area, the more powerful the processing performance, and the lower the power consumption. TSMC recently announced that it will build the world's first 3-nanometer chip manufacturing plant and plans to start production in 2020.

It is reported that TSMC and Samsung Electronics have adopted a 10-nanometer process to produce chips.

It is not yet known how many nanometer manufacturing processes are currently available in semiconductor factories in mainland China. Last year, there was news in the industry that SMIC will use 14nm process to produce chips in 2019.

In mainland China's semiconductor design companies, statistics released by industry organizations at the end of last year show that there are nearly 1,400 chip design companies in mainland China, and last year's total revenue will reach 30 billion US dollars.

In some low-end smart phones, domestic machine manufacturers began to try to use the design company's processor. However, mainstream processors still come from Qualcomm and MediaTek.