BEIJING, March 1 (InfoChina) – An insider from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation ("SMIC", NYSE: SMI, HK: 0981) confirmed that SMIC would acquire sets of 8-inch wafer devices from Elpida Memory, Inc., a manufacturer of advanced Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 6665) and put them into its foundry located in Chengdu, capital of southwest China’s Sichuan province, 21st Century Business Herald reports.
SMIC and Elpida declined to tell how much money the deal involved.
SMIC’s Chengdu foundry is the first 8-inch one established in central and west China. Its construction was once rumored to be postponed due to capital shortage, which was denied by SMIC.
SMIC indicated that the Chengdu foundry would employ second-hand devices from its Shanghai 8-inch foundry as the main force. Devices from Elpida will contribute to the capacity improvement.
At present, top chip producers in the world are turning to more advanced chip production such as 12-inch wafer and transfer relatively laggard 6-inch and 8-inch production lines to China, Viet Nam and Malaysia.
Such transfer is regarded to help Chinese enterprises reduce the huge equipment investment by a big margin and improve production capacity. Currently, China has 47 wafer production lines that can only meet 20 percent demand on the domestic IC market. (Edited by Yang Liu,
)
China Stock News 
