Chinese-made chips provide increasing support for key industries

BEIJING — Made-in-China microchips have made remarkable progress in supporting the development of key industries, according to an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information.

China’s integrated circuit (IC) industry production volume stood at 156.5 billion yuan (about $24.9 billion) in 2017, while the market value of the industry has reached 541.1 billion yuan, Diao Shijing, in charge of electronic information division, said over the weekend.

Chinese-made chips for mobile devices account for more than one-fifth of the global market share.

Hangzhou C-SKY Microsystems, which was acquired by Alibaba Group on April 20, has sold about 600 million embedded CPU chips.

China has developed a large production capacity for financial IC card chips and a comprehensive technological system for chips in the Beidou navigation system.

The country’s high-end design capacity is also improving. Domestic design industry market scale rose from 104.7 billion yuan in 2014 to 198 billion yuan in 2017, the second largest value in the world.

China was picking up speed in building advanced IC production lines, which has led to growth in supporting industries, including equipment and materials.

China has achieved “fruitful innovative achievements” in the research and development of photoelectronic devices, according to Zhu Ninghua, deputy head of the Institute of Semiconductors under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“Technological breakthroughs have been made in high-end photoelectronic devices,” he said, adding China has grasped key technologies of medium-and low-end photoelectronic devices.