Guangzhou tech company rises to meet the demands of the AI era

Guangzhou CanSemi Technology Inc in Guangdong province is actively expanding its silicon photonic chip production lines to meet the rapid digital economic growth demands in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Fueled by the explosive growth of artificial intelligence and the digital economy, massive data computing and storage have set extremely high requirements for data transmission speed and energy consumption, according to Wu Hao, assistant president of Guangzhou CanSemi Technology Inc.

To address the emerging market demand, CanSemi Technology is actively expanding production capacity for silicon photonics chips as part of the company's Phase IV project, Wu said.

"CanSemi Technology has started research and development of the project three years ago and now we are vigorously promoting and advancing its construction," he said.

Driven by the digital economy trend, CanSemi will also further upgrade its existing products to achieve digital transformation and develop advanced mixed-signal chip manufacturing capabilities, according to Wu.

Meanwhile, the company will build a specialized production line centered on optical chips and optoelectronic integration to meet the strong demand for mixed-signal, optoelectronic, storage-computing integrated chips in the Greater Bay Area, he said.

"For such a large country and an industry of such enormous scale, we need both our advanced digital chips and advanced analog chips," added Wu.

In addition to advancing its process nodes, the company is also developing a diverse range of process platforms to meet the growing demands of various application scenarios, according to Zeng Hui, director of the company's R&D center.

"For instance, the BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) platform we have developed is mainly used in power management applications," Zeng said. "New-energy vehicles impose stringent requirements on battery management and our BCD platform is well positioned to meet such market demand."

CanSemi Technology is now the largest scale manufacturer of mass produced 12-inch silicon photonic chips in the Chinese mainland, marking a breakthrough from 0 to 1 in Guangdong's integrated circuit manufacturing sector.

The Phase IV project of the company in Guangzhou Development District is expected to inject strong momentum into the high-quality development of the Greater Bay Area's Integrated Circuit (IC) industry.

The project — bringing with it a construction investment of more than 25.2 billion yuan (around $3.7 billion) — includes a 12-inch analog-mixed signal specialty process production line with a monthly capacity of 40,000 wafers. Construction of the Phase IV project begun in January.

These capabilities are aimed at meeting the growing demand for specialty processes driven by cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, edge AI, industrial electronics, and automotive electronics.

Upon completion by the end of 2029, the total monthly capacity of the company will reach 120,000 wafers, making CanSemi Technology the largest 12-inch wafer manufacturer in South China.

As of the end of last year, CanSemi Technology boasted a monthly production capacity of more than 60,000 12-inch wafers. The company has now obtained a total of 712 authorized patents (including overseas patents), among which 343 are invention patents.

To date, its cumulative shipment of 12-inch wafers has exceeded 1.8 million pieces, playing a role in promoting the digital economic construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

As of the end of April, data indicates that CanSemi Technology is the only company capable of large-scale mass production of 12-inch silicon photonic wafers on the Chinese mainland.

zhengcaixiong@chinadaily.com.cn