Foundries including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) and Huahong Grace Semiconductor are all gearing up for China's growing market for chip cards, such as bank IC cards, which has a size of almost 1.5 billion units annually.

TSMC's embedded flash process technology has advanced to 90nm, designed specifically for smart card IC solutions. Meanwhile, SMIC offers 0.18- and 0.13-micron eEEPROM processes, and has recently announced that four of China's six bank card IC design houses that qualify for China Union Pay certification chose SMIC as their foundry partner.

Huahong Grace Semiconductor, established by a merger between Hua Hong Semiconductor and Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing, has also secured orders from several IC design houses specializing in smart card ICs. Huahong Grace shipped about 2.65 million chips for smart card applications in 2012.

In addition, rumors circulated recently in China's semiconductor industry that Globalfoundries is partnering with Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics to produce smart card ICs with output set to ramp up in 2014.

Shanghai Fudan is one of the bank card IC design houses, which include Datang Microelectronics, Tsinghua Tongfang, Nationz Technologies, CEC Huada Electronic Design and Shanghai Huahong Integrated Circuit, with products already obtaining China Union Pay certifications.

By: DocMemory
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