Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Shanghai) Corp said recently the technological breakthrough had enabled the company to become the country's first producer of the product.

With the technology, the company will be able to provide its customers with tiny embedded static random access memory (SRAM), electrically-erasable, programmable, read-only memory (EEPROM), mixed signal and radio frequency (RF) circuits.

With an investment of US$1.6 billion during the initial phase, the company, set up in April 2000, is the biggest chip manufacturer with the state-of-the-art technology on the Chinese mainland.

Located in Zhangjiang High-Technology Industrial Park in Pudong New District, the company specializes in manufacturing eight to 12-inch wafers and microchips of 0.25 to 0.18 microns.

By the end of this year, the company's three plants in Zhangjiang will be set up and will start operations with a capacity of producing 37,000 pieces per month.

A spokesman for the company said about half of the products will be exported while the rest will be for domestic market.

Of the 2,500 technological professionals with the company, about 130 are from the United States, 450 from Taiwan, and more than 70 from Singapore, the Republic of Korea and Japan and approximately 20 from European countries.

(Xinhua News Agency August 23, 2002)