China Injects $2.2 Billion Into Local Chip Firm

China's state-backed funds pumped $2.25 billion into a Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. wafer plant to support advanced-chip making as Washington tightens technology restrictions on the Asian nation. From a report:

The Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. plant's registered capital jumps from $3.5 billion to $6.5 billion after the investment, the company said in an announcement on Friday. The chipmaker's stake in the Shanghai facility will drop from 50.1% to 38.5%, it said. The plant has capacity to produce 6,000 14-nanometer wafers a month and plans to boost that to 35,000. The new investment came as Washington moved to prevent sales to Huawei by chipmakers using U.S. technology. The Commerce Department on Friday said it would require licenses before allowing U.S. technology to be used by the Chinese company or its 114 subsidiaries, including its chip-design unit HiSilicon

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TSMC To Build Advanced Semiconductor Factory In Arizona

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's largest contract manufacturer of silicon chips, is set to announce plans to build an advanced chip factory in Arizona (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) as U.S. concerns grow about dependence on Asia for the critical technology. The plans come as the Trump administration has sought to jump-start development of new chip factories in the U.S. due to rising fears about the U.S.'s heavy reliance on Taiwan, China and South Korea to produce microelectronics and other key technologies.

TSMC is expected to announce the plans as soon as Friday after making the decision at a board meeting on Tuesday in Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter. The factory could be producing chips by the end of 2023 at the earliest, they said, adding that both the State and Commerce Departments are involved in the plans. TSMC's new plant would make chips branded as having 5-nanometer transistors, the tiniest, fastest and most power-efficient ones manufactured today, according to a person familiar with the plans. TSMC just started rolling out 5-nanometer chips for customers to test at a factory in Taiwan in recent months. It is unclear how much TSMC has budgeted or if it would get financial incentives from the U.S. to build. A factory capable of making the most advanced chips would almost certainly cost more than $10 billion, according to industry executives.

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IBM, Intel Start $4.4 Billion Chip Venture in New York

Kudos to IBM, Intel and New York state for putting together a deal that will make upstate New York the center of R&D work for chip production on 450-mm and the development of 22- and 14-nm process technology for IBM's so-called "fab club," the Common Platform Alliance. According to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, the deal, which involves $4.4 billion of investment, will create about 4,400 jobs and help the region retain another 2,500. Many of those jobs might just have easily have ended up in Taiwan, South Korea, Abu Dhabi or elsewhere. The deal is a coup for New York, which is presumably offering the companies tax breaks or other incentives to locate the projects there. (New York state itself is kicking in some $400 million over five years, but Gov. Cuomo made it clear in a statement announcing the projects that no private company will receive any state funds as part of the agreement.) Albany, already home to the semiconductor research consortium Sematech, the Albany Nanotech Complex and, soon, the Global 450 Consortium, increasingly appears to have surpassed the Silicon Valley as the place to be for semiconductor industry R&D. [More]

Intel opens China fab

Intel Corp. has begun operations within its first fab in China, according to Dow Jones. In 2007, Intel won approval to build a $2.5 billion, 300-mm wafer plant in northern China for chip sets. The plan called for the fab to be in the city of Dalian. The fab will produce 65-nm devices.

Intel is also expanding in the U.S. As reported, Intel recently confirmed speculation that it will build a new R&D wafer fab in Hillsboro, Ore., and upgrade other existing U.S. facilities for 22-nm production at a total investment of between $6 billion and $8 billion.

The investment will create 800 to 1,000 permanent high-tech jobs and 6,000 to 8,000 construction jobs, Intel (Santa Clara, Calif.) said. The new development fab in Oregon, to be known as D1X, is slated for R&D startup in 2013.

One analyst thinks the fab will be ''450-mm ready.'' [Via: EETimes]