Xiamen UMC is a joint venture found by Taiwan UMC, Xiamen Municipal Government and Fujian Electronics Group, UMC invest US$ 0.45 billion in which, providing 12-inch foundry services, 55nm and 40nm process will be provided in the initial stage.

A local officials said, after completing the first stage of construction plan and going to mass production by 2020, Xiamen UMC will activate the second stage plan of investment. It will become a 12-inch fab foundry with productivity of one hundred thousand units.

In the groundbreaking ceremony yesterday, Qualcomm president Derek Aberle was a surprisingly special guest. Qualcomm has worked with UMC since last year, handed its 28nm HKMG process mobile phone chip orders to UMC, and incresed quantity this year. The emergence of Derek Aberle, represents the cooperation between Qualcomm and UMC can be deepened.

Derek Aberle said, the 55 nm and 40nm manufacturing process of Xiamen UMC can used to produce the embedded chips, including smart cards, micro-controllers and fingerprint sensors, can also be used to produce CMOS image sensor, will be a production base of IoT. Qualcomm is very optimistic about this investment plan, is very likely to produce chips in this fab.