SMIC to benefit from $3 billion investment
Although the funds are to be split between three manufacturers Moody’s expects SMIC to get at least one quarter or about $750 million.
Moody’s sees the announcement as positive for SMIC which is China’s leading chip foundry but one that is struggling to get close enough to the leading-edge to trouble market leaders such as TSMC, Samsung and Globalfoundries.
In 2015 SMIC invested about 10 billion yuan (about $1.5 billion) and was the beneficiary of a $400 million investment by the nationally organized China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund.
The CICIIF is a national fund established in September 2014 to support the growth of the IC industry in China. SICIF was created in 2015 as a 50 billion yuan (about $7.5 billion) "small fund" to support IC design, manufacturing, materials and equipment development as part of China’s national "big fund" plan.
The funding will be welcome and could help SMIC’s migration to offering 28nm, which is expected to be a workhorse node at a time when TSMC is thought to be about to construct a 300mm wafer fab in China.
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