Beijing BDA aims to be nation's biggest chip base
( 2002-10-15 09:11 ) (1 )

Plans by Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (BDA) to build seven to eight semiconductor lines in the coming years, will turn it into one of the biggest such bases in China.

"We have reserved 3 square kilometres of space for the microelectronics industry and currently semiconductor manufacturing is the most important part of our development strategy," said Li Fengling, director of the BDA Administrative Committee.

Li made the remark on Monday at a Global Integrated Circuit (IC) Design and Mobile Communications Forum held by BDA, the IT How-Why newspaper in Beijing and the Taiwan-based DigiTimes newspaper group.

Li revealed that BDA has finalized talks on five major projects in the area, including a super, large-scale LCD (liquid crystal display) project, financed by a major Taiwanese company, whose name Li declined to disclose.

The other four projects are two GaAs semiconductor lines to produce semiconductors for mobile communications, a TFT-LCD (thin film transistor LCD) IC project.

At the same time,the Beijing SMIC Universal Corporation (BSUC) has invested US$1.25 billion to build at least one eight-inch 0.18-micron semiconductor foundry.

According to Li, BSUC plans to build a total of four semiconductor lines in the next few years.

Li said BDA will take advantage of Beijing's role as the foremost IC design centre in China and mass production of semiconductors, to build seven to eight lines in the high-tech zone.

"We will be glad to have more leading international IC manufacturers to come to BDA," Li said.