China Urges Cooperation in Semiconductor Chips Production

China’s information and industrial authority advocated for further cooperation between semiconductor manufacturers to prepare for the upcoming 5G era.

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Wen Ku, the director and spokesperson of the Information and Communication Development Department in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said companies, including semiconductor companies, should work closely to fully apply good technologies and bring out good performance from high-quality semiconductor products, especially for the upcoming 5G era.

The bandwidth will be very wide in the 5G era and it needs better semiconductor devices to complete the communication tasks.

Semiconductors are an essential component of the devices in our daily lives, such as mobile phones, computers, etc. However, at present, more than 95 percent of high-end chips in China rely on imported semiconductor manufacturers, which is not a long-term solution.

According to a survey conducted by the MIIT on over 30 large enterprises in China, 32 percent of 130 key materials can not be sourced within China and 52 percent rely on imports.

Meanwhile, 95 percent of high-end chips used in most computer and several general-purpose processors are dependent on imports; so are more than 70 percent of intelligent terminal processors and most memory chips.

On the other hand,China has seen some achievements in the intergrated electric circuit industry. In 2014, China issued a promotion outline for the development of the national integrated circuit industry. According to Huang Libin, spokesperson for the MIIT, China’s integrated circuit industry has achieved rapid development under various efforts in the past few years.

In 2017, the industry sales reached 560 billion yuan ($88 billion), more than doubled from 2012. Core technologies have achieved breakthroughs, chip designs have upgraded 2 generations and the manufacturing processes has been upgraded by 1.5 generations, and the process technology for 32 and 28 nm has also reached large-scale mass production.

In addition, the key enterprises had also been strengthened and investment has grown sharply. In the past three years, annual investment in the whole industry has exceeded 100 billion yuan, more than twice that of 2012. In the first half of 2018, China’s integrated circuit output reached 85 billion, an increase of 15 percent.

We still fall behind decades and have to catch up with developed countries. The road to building a strong nation is still very long,

said Xin Guobin, deputy minister of MIIT at the “2018 National Manufacturing Power Building” forum on July 13.