First Huawei Wafer Fab Established
No one knows the exact number of Huawei’s inventory of chips, but it is undeniable that the impact of the relevant constraints does exist. The latest news says that the first Huawei wafer fab is located in Wuhan, Hubei, and is scheduled to go into production in 2022.
According to Digitimes reported that Huawei will establish its first fab in Wuhan, Hubei Province is expected to start phased production from 2022, the specific source only said that it was revealed by industry sources, reliability is unknown, the official has not yet responded.
Sources close to the media disclosed that the factory is initially planned to produce optical communication chips and modules products to achieve self-sufficiency. According to an article, Huawei HiSilicon is the only company in China that can develop coherent optical DSP chipsets.
Optical communication chips are different from cell phone SoC, etc., process requirements are not high, but wafer processing is, after all, an industry that requires huge investment and technology accumulation, for this news should also be viewed with caution.
At present, the world has both advanced chip research and development capabilities and wafer fab companies are rare, familiar including Intel, Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, etc… Huawei’s Wuhan R&D force is said to be nearly 10,000 people, with major projects including optical communication equipment, HiSilicon chips, self-driving LIDAR, etc.
Also back in 2019, the Wuhan Municipal Bureau of Land Resources and Planning publicized the planning and design plan for the Light Factory project on Lot A of the Wuhan R&D and Production Project (Phase II) of Huawei Technologies Co., with a total investment of RMB 1.8 billion, and it is unclear what the relationship is between the plan and the so-called fab above.
It is worth mentioning that not long ago, Huawei (Wuhan) Intelligent Networked Vehicle Industry Innovation Center was inaugurated, and the staff said it would provide a very powerful GPU (graphics processor) or NPU (embedded neural network processor) for some simulation arithmetic.
When it comes to Huawei, I believe most people are not too unfamiliar. Huawei is a multinational high-tech company that provides communications equipment and sells consumer electronics, with its main products used in commercial applications, such as communications equipment.
It is worth mentioning that Huawei released the industry’s first 800G tunable ultra-high-speed optical module last year, and still strives to realize the localization of core chips for optical devices despite the restricted background.
In addition, Huawei HiSilicon disclosed two patents in the field of wafers on June 18 and June 22, respectively. From the revealed information, it can be seen that Huawei HiSilicon is continuing to focus on semiconductor wafers and chips and other areas of technical pain points.