Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (HSMC) should actually start producing chips with structures of 14 Start with nanometers and from 2021 research your own 7-nm process. The Chinese government and local donors saw investments of around 20 billion US dollars or just under 17 billion euros before.

Now the project is about to end, as the South China Morning Post reported. Accordingly, the money ran out long before the projected investments were exhausted. Wuhan’s local government is said to have taken over management of the (non-functional) manufacturing facility – HSMC’s management team page is currently blank. The company was previously owned by 90 percent Beijing Guangliang Lantu Technology.

Chaotic management The website EE Times has spoke to former HSMC CEO Shang-Yi Chiang, according to which the entire project was a mess. Before being poached, he worked for TSMC for more than two decades, most recently as Chief Operating Officer (COO).

Voices have been heard earlier that HSMC was suffering from delays, poor communication and little know-how -how is plagued among decision makers. Accordingly, local government and investors wanted to court the favor of the Chinese government without having much knowledge of the semiconductor industry.

US trade war The coronavirus pandemic, which hit Wuhan hard at the beginning of the year, and the trade war with the United States exacerbated the situation . The US wants to block the export of manufacturing tools to Chinese semiconductor projects, among other things, in order to slow down the development of Chinese chip production facilities. Besides HSMC, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is also affected.

TSMC, Samsung and Intel are currently developing the most modern manufacturing processes for silicon chips. As the physics of exposure technology becomes more and more complicated, companies are out of the race for the most advanced processes – including Globalfoundries from the USA. The former industry leader Intel has been plagued by delays for years. China wants to make itself independent of the companies mentioned; So far, SMIC has been manufacturing in its own 14 – nm process, but in comparatively small quantities.

(mma)