Mainland China’s semiconductor foundry capacity is on its way to surpassing that of Taiwan by 2030 due to the country’s efforts to attain chip self-sufficiency, French research firm Yole Group projected in a new study.
China’s worldwide share of foundry capacity is expected to reach 30 percent by 2030, up from 21 percent last year, the study said.
China currently lags Taiwan’s leading 23 percent share but has surpassed South Korea’s 19 percent, Japan’s 13 percent and the US’ 10 percent.
Foundry expansion
Yole Group said mainland China was becoming a “central player” in the global chip industry and attributed the trend to the Chinese government’s intensified efforts to boost its domestic semiconductor industry and reduce reliance on foreign imports, which have been paradoxically spurred by increasing US-led export controls on chip technology.
Most of the country’s chip capacity derives from foreign companies that operate factories there, with domestic firms accounting for more than 15 percent of foundry capacity last year.
The share of domestic firms is expected to be “significantly more” by 2030, Yole’s report said.
China was expected to start three new fab projects this year, one-sixth of the world’s total, according to a January report by US-based chip industry group SEMI.
The projects are expected to help increase chip manufacturing capacity by 6 percent for chips made with “legacy” processes of 8 nanometres to 45nm, SEMI said.
Advanced chips
China has faced difficulties developing higher-end chip manufacturing processes for advanced chips needed to drive use-cases such as AI acceleration.
Manufacturer SMIC developed a 7nm process used to create chips for Huawei smartphones two years ago, but the same process was used for chips in a new Huawei laptop with a foldable display, Canadian research firm TechInsights said in a recent report.
Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics are expected to reach mass production with 2nm nodes later this year in the case of TSMC or early next year for Samsung.