Globalfoundries and the municipality of Chengdu are counting on China to rewrite the history of FD-SOI.

This public/private partnership Tuesday (May 23) unveiled a plan to pump $100 million into a project to “spur innovation in China’s semiconductor industry” around FD-SOI.

The move is a significant step in efforts to ignite broader acceptance of the non-bulk CMOS technology in China. The plan rests on the fact that China today consumes more than 58 percent of semiconductors produced worldwide and a nationwide drive to substantially expand indigenous semiconductor production capacities. 

While China held only a 16.2 percent share of worldwide semiconductor production in 2015, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report released this year, the nation is currently going through an unprecedented fab boom, backed by 120 billion yuan National IC fund (more than $17 billion) and supported by 600 billion yuan ($85 billion) from local government and private equity companies. 

Riding the fab wave, China is making a concerted effort to join the memory industry. On the logic front, it appears that Globalfoundries, collaborating with Chengdu, hopes to advance the FD-SOI agenda. It’s planning a fab in Chengdu equipped to produce chips using Globalfoundries’ 22FDX FD-SOI technology. 

The newly unveiled $100 million budget allocated for building the FD-SOI ecosystem in Chengdu is a part of $10 billion Globalfoundries and Chengdu’s leaders announced in spending on fab construction.

Alain Mutricy, senior vice president of product management at Globalfoundries, told EE Times, “The investment in the Chengdu fab was the first chapter. This is the second chapter” for Globalfoundries to nurture and assist China’s still fledgling fabless chip companies and design service businesses. Mutricy expects a number of EDA companies (i.e. Synopsys, Cadence and others) and IP vendors (i.e. ARM) to open offices in Chengdu to support the FD-SOI ecosystem with their tools and IPs.

Those who already raised their hands to become a part of the FD-SOI ecosystem in Chengdu at the time of the announcement include: Cadence, Synopsys, MediaTek, RockChip, VeriSilicon, Invecas, Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics Group Company and others.

Joe Chen, executive vice president and co-COO of MediaTek, for example, said in a statement: “MediaTek established our site in Chengdu back to 2010. Chengdu is quickly becoming an international destination for cutting-edge technology companies, and we are thrilled to see continued investment to establish the region as a center of excellence for both manufacturing and design of Globalfoundries' FDX technology.”

Stressing FD-SOI is "an ideal technology for new embedded systems that need connectivity," Globalfoundries' Mutricy listed IoT, 5G and ADAS (vision processing) as market segments where FD-SOI will be a good fit.

By: DocMemory
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