ST collaborates with Innoscience,wafer foundry industry integration and transmission

1\STMicroelectronics and Innolux sign GaN development and manufacturing agreement
STMicroelectronics (ST) announced on March 31 that it has signed an agreement with Innoscience, a global leader in high-performance, low-cost manufacturing of 8-inch gallium nitride on silicon (GaN on Si), to develop and manufacture GaN technology, leveraging their respective strengths to enhance GaN power solutions and supply chain resilience. The two companies have reached an agreement on a joint development plan for GaN power technology to advance the prospects of GaN power in consumer electronics, data centers, automotive and industrial power systems, and more applications in the coming years.
In addition, the agreement allows InnoTech to utilize ST's front-end manufacturing capabilities outside of China to produce its GaN chips, while ST can utilize InnoTech's front-end manufacturing capabilities in China to produce GaN wafers. The common goal is for each company to expand its personal products in the GaN field through supply chain flexibility and resilience to meet the requirements of all customers in a wide range of applications.
2\Chuanlian Electric and Gexin will merge to compete with mature processes
According to relevant reports cited by Fast Technology, US wafer foundry giant Gexin is in preliminary contact with United Microelectronics Corporation regarding a potential merger. This news has sparked strong market reactions, with the New York Stock Exchange ADR soaring 20.1% during trading and ultimately closing up nearly 15%, highlighting investors' high expectations for this potential merger.
From an industry perspective, the two companies currently hold approximately 5% of the global wafer foundry market share each. Industry analysts point out that if the merger is successful, the new entity will surpass Samsung's foundry division with a market share of about 10%, becoming the second largest pure wafer foundry company after TSMC.
Regarding market rumors, UMC maintains a cautious attitude, stating that "the company does not respond to any market rumors and there are currently no merger cases underway". Industry insiders believe that considering the strategic sensitivity of the semiconductor industry, such mergers and acquisitions will face complex regulatory scrutiny.
3\UMC Singapore Fab 12i expansion completed, strengthening diversified layout
Semiconductor foundry UMC recently announced the opening ceremony of its expanded new factory in Singapore. The first phase of the new factory will begin mass production from 2026, and is expected to increase the total production capacity of UMC's Fab 12i factory in Singapore to over 1 million 12 inch wafers per year. In addition, UMC's new factory will also become one of Singapore's most advanced wafer foundries, providing semiconductor chips for communication, IoT, automotive, and artificial intelligence innovation fields.
The new expansion plan of UMC located in the White Sands Wafer Technology Park in Singapore is divided into two phases. The total investment amount for the first phase is 5 billion US dollars, with a monthly production capacity of 30000 pieces, and space is reserved for the second phase for future investment plans. The new factory will provide industry-leading 22nm and 28nm process technologies, which are currently the most advanced wafer foundry processes in Singapore's semiconductor industry. It will provide global customers with advanced smartphone display chips, high-performance memory chips for IoT devices, and next-generation communication chips.
4\Memory prices rise, storage production companies accelerate expansion
According to Caixin News Agency, starting from 2024, several original memory chip manufacturers have announced plans to reduce production by 15% -25% to cope with industry inventory pressure. Entering 2025, with the optimization of supply and demand structure, memory prices have also begun to rise steadily. Recently, storage companies including Micron and Samsung have announced that they will increase the prices of their memory products.
Industry insiders have stated that since the fourth quarter of 2024, storage manufacturers have actively regulated their production capacity to reduce inventory, coupled with the accelerated penetration of AI side products, which has greatly increased the market demand for storage. Benefiting from the gradual increase in memory prices and sustained strong market demand, many companies have already placed orders in the third quarter. In order to meet market demand, companies are accelerating production expansion.

5\SK Hynix completes packaging factory production line renovation, increasing HBM monthly production capacity
According to IT Home citing Korean media reports, SK Hynix has completed the production line renovation of its M10F factory located in Licheon, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea at the end of March. The factory has shifted from being responsible for backend processing of general DRAM products to packaging high value-added, high demand HBM memory. The HBM packaging production line of the factory has started mass production at the end of March.

The report predicts that this move will increase SK Hynix's HBM packaging capacity by 10000 wafers per month, bringing the total production capacity to 130000 wafers per month. By the end of this year, it will increase to 160000 to 170000 wafers per month with the operation of the M15X factory in Qingzhou City. The overall production capacity is expected to further increase next year due to the increase in M15X operating rate and the transformation and operation of the Qingzhou M8.

6\Loongson 2K3000 processor successfully taped out, integrating second-generation self-developed GPU core
According to Kuaishi Technology, Loongson Zhongke officially announced that recently, Loongson 2K3000 and Loongson 3B6000M have successfully completed chip production, and preliminary functional and performance assessments have been completed, with all indicators meeting expectations.
Loongson 2K3000 and 3B6000M are different packaging versions based on the same silicon wafer, respectively targeting the industrial control application field and the mobile terminal field. This chip integrates 8 LA364E cores based on self-developed Dragon architecture, with a SPEC CPU 2006 Base tested at 2.5GHz, achieving a single core fixed-point score of 30 points.
Integrating the second-generation self-developed GPGPU core LG200, compared to the first generation LG100 integrated in Loongson 2K2000, the graphics performance is doubled. It also supports general computing acceleration and AI acceleration, with a single precision floating-point peak performance of 256GFLOPS and an 8-bit fixed-point peak performance of 8TOPS.
At present, the Loongson 2K3000 (3B6000M) OpenCL computing power framework and related AI acceleration software have completed preliminary testing, and the related supporting software is being improved.

7\Ankaiwei releases low-power intelligent vision chips KM01A and KM01W
According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, Ankaiwei announced that on April 2nd, the company released low-power intelligent vision chips KM01A and KM01W, which support AOV technology, integrate a new generation of self-developed NPU and image signal processor, and enhance image processing and video encoding capabilities.
At present, system development platforms based on KM01A and KM01W have been released. The new product will further consolidate the company's market share in the field of AI intelligent vision chips and explore broader intelligent vision application scenarios. However, the new product is still in the stage of market introduction, and there is a risk that the progress of market promotion and customer development may not be as expected.