Leading chip processing platform proposed

Ruan Shuangchen, a municipal political adviser and president of Shenzhen Technology University (SZTU), proposed to build a leading global chip processing platform and step up efforts to cultivate talents in semiconductors and integrated circuits at the annual session of the city’s political advisory body that wrapped up Wednesday.

“The country’s existing platforms don’t have equipment for compound semiconductors. American universities have nearly 100 micro-nano processing platforms. However, there are only a few universities that have similar platforms in China,” Ruan said, adding that in recent years, more talents are needed in the semiconductor industry.

In 2021, SZTU cooperated with various firms to build the first integrated circuit school in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA). Ruan suggested supporting SZTU to build a semiconductor micro-nano-optics center and promoting industry-university-research cooperation to build an open integrated circuit pilot line.

The integrated circuit industry is a core of the information industry and a key force leading a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, according to a Shenzhen Economic Daily report.

Shenzhen is one of the distribution, application and design centers of semiconductor and integrated circuit products in China. In recent years, the industry has developed rapidly. The main business income of Shenzhen’s integrated circuit industry exceeded 110 billion yuan (US$16 billion) in 2021.

In Shenzhen, many large, medium and small optoelectronics, MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) and related downstream enterprises have a huge demand for optoelectronic and MEMS chips.

However, a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises need to seek trial production manufacturing services due to their limited research and development (R&D) and processing capabilities.

Ruan thus proposed to promote the development of the semiconductor and integrated circuit industries in the GBA and cultivate more talents in the field.