The Tsinghua Unigroup corporation starts building a memory manufacturing base in Chengdu：producing 3D flash memory with an investment of 24 billion dollars.
Almost all memory chips in China are imported. With the total value of imported memory chips reaching $88.6 billion in 2017. Improving the localization of memory chips is already one of the key development projects supported by the state. At present, there are three major projects in China, namely Tsinghua Unigroup, GigaDevice and JHICC, and Tsinghua Unigroup mainly focuses on 3D NAND flash memory. The first phase of the production base of Yangtze Memory Technologies in Wuhan has been finished, and it can achieve mass production at the end of this year or the beginning of next year. Tsinghua Unigroup held celebration of building the new manufacturing base on October 12 in Chengdu. It will invest $24 billion to build a new flash memory factory, mainly producing 3D NAND flash memory.
According to CHINANEWS, in celebration of building a new memory manufacturing base, Tsinghua Unigroup held a mobilization activity yesterday, in Shuangliu, Chengdu. Senior government officials such as Chengdu party secretary and mayor, and Zhao Weiguo, president and CEO of Tsinghua Unigroup, attended the event and delivered keynote speeches.
Luo Qiang, mayor of Chengdu, said in his speech that “Chengdu is an important national development base of electronic information industry, and is actively implementing the "one chip, one screen" development planning. We should not only closely focus on the development and manufacturing of key core components, also fully promote the transition and upgrading of electronic information industry. We firmly believe that with the strong support from the ministry and the provincial party committee and the provincial government, the project will consolidate the important position of Tsinghua Unigroup in the global integrated circuit industry, and improve the status of Chengdu and Sichuan in the worldwide chip manufacturing industry through the innovation and hard work of all employees of Tsinghua Unigroup. Chengdu will continue to provide high-quality and efficient services for the construction and operation of the project of Tsinghua Unigroup, in order to forge, maintain and make use of the core technology - national critical weapon, and print a better future for China's electronic information technology industry with Tsinghua Unigroup.”
Zhao Weiguo said, the construction of the Chengdu Tsinghua Unigroup integrated circuit manufacturing base marks another solid step for Tsinghua Unigroup in the field of chip manufacturing and symbolize another bridgehead built in the prosperity of China's integrated circuit industry. This project aimed at our country high-end integrated circuit design, manufacture and so on weak links, and gather the international high-end technology industry strengths to build a world-class semiconductor industry base, which is of great significance for China to achieve breakthrough and innovation in high-end integrated circuit. We have reasons to believe that the establishment of it would help the Sichuan and Chengdu become the world's important electronic information industry base, and contribute the high-quality economic development of Sichuan and Chengdu.
It is introduced that the project of Chengdu Tsinghua Unigroup memory manufacturing base covers an area of about 1200 mu, with a total investment of 24 billion dollars. It will build a 12-inch 3D NAND memory wafer production line, and start the development, manufacture and sale of memory chips and related products, such as memory chips, modules, solutions, which aims to build a world-class semiconductor industry base.
PS: with the construction of the memory manufacturing base in Chengdu, Tsinghua Unigroup has set up three locations of the memory chip bases in Wuhan, Nanjing and Chengdu. The Wuhan project is reorganized into Yangtze Memory Technologies after the acquisition of Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing company with a total investment of 24 billion dollars. At the same time of the construction of the project in Chengdu, the "Nanjing Tsinghua Unigroup integrated circuit base project (phase I)" ceremony was also held in Nanjing, with a total investment of 10.5 billion dollars. The project will produce about 100,000 wafers per month after construction.
According to the plan released earlier, the company has invested as much as $70 billion to the memory chip layout in Wuhan, Chengdu and Nanjing, but these investments are not one-off investments. Each base is at least two to three phases of the project, with the investment cycle span of 5-10 years.