Chinese firms SMIC and Huawei partner with Qualcomm, Imec in major new R&D venture

Mainland China’s efforts to expand its semiconductor industry received a huge boost this week, after four companies unveiled a plan to build the country’s most advanced integrated circuit (IC) research and development programme.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), mainland China’s biggest contract chipmaker, has formed a joint venture with Qualcomm, Huawei Technologies and Belgium-based Imec, one of the world’s leading nanoelectronics research and development institutes, to undertake that initiative.

“This is the most advanced work for China’s IC industry,” SMIC chief executive Chiu Tzu-yin said in the announcement in Beijing. SMIC will have majority shareholding in the joint venture.

The new joint-venture company, SMIC Advanced Technology Research & Development (Shanghai) Corporation, will initially focus on so-called 14-nanometer complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology based on Imec’s advanced IC know-how.

CMOS refers to both a particular digital circuitry design used to construct various semiconductors and the family of processes used to deploy that circuitry on chips.

SMIC will have the rights to license the intellectual property on the mass-production technologies developed by the joint venture company. This will also enable SMIC to apply those technologies to its current and future range of products manufactured for its customers.