Mar. 19, 2008 – Chinese flagship foundry SMIC is spreading the focus of its wafer fabs across different parts of China, with those in the northeast and northwest to be allocated for solar business, according to comments by CEO Richard Chang, reported by Digitimes.

Chang noted in a speech at SEMICON China that those solar business sites were chosen based on longer daylight hours, but did not elaborate about further plans.

Chang also discussed SMIC’s plans to centralize advanced process development at its 300mm fabs in Beijing (90-65nm) and Shanghai (40nm, with support from the Beijing site), according to Digitimes. Capacity from a forthcoming 300mm site in Shenzhen will primarily be used for systems-on-chip (SoC) for motherboard and systems work. And SMIC’s site in Wuhan will focus on NAND flash alongside logic ICs, using 90-70-65nm processes. The company’s Tianjin fab will focus on BiCMOS and PWM ICs.

A 200mm site in Chengdu will offer high-voltage power management ICs and MEMS, while a 200mm operation in Shanghai will serve as backup for high-voltage processes, the publication noted.