Recently, Hua Hong took over GF's factory in Chengdu, which can be regarded as a new chapter for this unfinished project.
Many years ago, there was investment in chip projects across the country, among them, there were successful ones, such as TSMC Nanjing Factory, Yangtze River Storage, Changxin Storage, and unfinished projects, such as GF, Decoma, Dehuai, Hongxin, and Quanxin. Compared with Decma, Dehuai, Hongxin, and Quanxin, which have huge risks and problems at a glance, GF is relatively reliable.
GF came to China to set up a factory, mainly because of long-term losses, and wanted to regain blood by selling technology and second-hand equipment. GF's original plan was to take two steps, the first step was to invest in mature technology and move foreign second-hand equipment to Chengdu, and the second step was to build a 22nm SOI process line. The first step belongs to the transfer and elimination of the production line used by foreign businessmen, and the second step of the 22nm SOI process is an advanced technology at that time, and the SOI and FinFET processes are and can be superimposed, if the semiconductor equipment is stuck and cannot develop 3nm chips, China can use the SOI + Finfet method to develop a new process with existing equipment. In short, even with an eye to the introduction of the SOI process, the project was positive at the time. However, this cooperation backfired, GF changed executives, and only wanted to do the first step to eliminate second-hand equipment, so it was unwilling to take the second step. Chengdu paid 5$200 million became a "dead asset".
Although Chengdu has invested a huge amount of money and has no output for the time being, the land, plant and equipment are ready-made, as long as there are wafer factories willing to take over and put the production line up and running, the future can still be expected. Huahong is the second largest wafer factory in China after SMIC, and Huali Microelectronics has mastered the 14nm process, which is technically no problem. I hope to take over the GF project and be able to achieve nirvana.