According to Digitimes, Hisilicon, a subsidiary of Huawei, has placed orders for 14-nanometer technology chips from SMIC International Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (SMIC).
Previously, Huawei Hisilicon's 16-nanometer orders were mainly manufactured by TSMC, and the main production capacity was concentrated in the Nanjing plant that was put into operation at the end of 2018. TSMC's Nanjing 12-inch wafer fab has an investment of about US $ 3 billion and a planned monthly production capacity of 20,000 wafers.
At the end of December 2019, it was reported that the United States plans to reduce the "derived from American technical standards" from 25% to 10% in an effort to block non-US companies such as TSMC from supplying to Huawei. According to a foreign report, TSMC internally assessed that 7 nanometers are derived from less than 10% of the U.S. technology and can continue to be supplied, but 14 nanometers will be limited.
For this reason, there have been reports that Huawei's main chip factory, Hisilicon, has accelerated the transfer of chip products to 7-nanometer and 5-nanometer advanced processes, and 14-nanometer products have been dispersed to SMIC, avoiding US pinning.
In addition, at the beginning of this year, Hisilicon began supplying chips to companies other than Huawei. Previously, Hisilicon only supplied chips to Huawei.
Combining these two news, the industry believes that with the goal of supporting local wafer foundries, SMIC will inevitably expand the market share of China's foundry market in 2020.
It is understood that SMIC began to develop 14 nanometers in 2015, and successfully began mass production of 14 nanometer FinFET process chips in the third quarter of 2019. After reaching production capacity according to the plan, SMIC's southern plant in Pudong, Shanghai will build two advanced integrated circuit production lines with a monthly capacity of 35,000.
SMIC's 12-nanometer technology has also begun to be introduced by customers, and the development of next-generation technology has also been steadily carried out. The new production line will help the development of emerging applications such as 5G, the Internet of Things, and automotive electronics in the future.
However, SMIC CEO Zhao Haijun also pointed out that as major mobile phone manufacturers have successively launched 5G mobile phones in the second quarter of 2020, and 5G construction has entered an accelerated period, factors have also driven the growth of related semiconductor orders. Visibility has been scheduled to 3 months later, which is the second quarter of 2020.