Hubei Daily News (Reporter Li Yuan, Correspondent Cheng Sheng) The project has hit the "±0.00" milestone merely three months after groundbreaking! On August 30, Hubei Hsingchen Technology Co., Ltd, an enterprise incubated by Hubei Yangtze Laboratory, announced that the casting of the last raft foundation slab for the production workshop of its advanced packaging industrialization base has been completed, marking the transition of construction work from underground to above-ground. The base is set to become the largest single advanced packaging mass production base in Chinese mainland.

The Hubei Hsingchen Technology Co., Ltd Advanced Packaging Industrialization Base is located in the Optics Valley Compound Semiconductor Industrial Innovation Block. With a total investment of RMB 25 billion, the project will be developed in two phases. The Phase I project, with an investment of RMB 10 billion, officially commenced construction at the end of May this year.

For a long time in the past, discussions on chips usually centered on nanometer process nodes. In recent years, as chip manufacturing processes are approaching physical limits, researchers no longer focus solely on shrinking individual transistors. Instead, they redesign chip architectures at the system level by stacking chips with diverse functions. Data no longer needs to travel long distances between separate chips, but can flow efficiently within the stack much like riding an elevator inside a building.

"Advanced packaging delivers generational leaps in overall performance through architectural innovation, and that is its core value," said Yang Daohong, Director of Hubei Yangtze Laboratory and Dean of the School of Integrated Circuits, Hubei University. This shift is reshaping the collaboration model of the entire chip industry. Previously, chip design, fabrication and packaging operated as relatively independent sequential links. Today, collaborative design and integrated optimization must be implemented from the initial stage. In his view, advanced packaging goes far beyond a standalone semiconductor process technology. It serves as a key enabler for system integration and computing power breakthroughs, and may even reshape the competitive landscape of the global integrated circuit industry.

At present, global high-end advanced packaging capacity falls short of market demand, with leading manufacturers seeing order backlogs extending beyond 2027. Industry insiders project explosive growth in market demand around 2028.

A booming market cannot be captured without mass production capacity. Once high-quality orders are lost and supplier relationships are established, it will be extremely difficult to regain such business. Founded in 2021, Hubei Hsingchen Technology Co., Ltd has built China’s most comprehensive and technologically advanced advanced packaging pilot platform in Optics Valley. The platform has completed pilot tape-out for nearly 30 types of high-performance chips and provided verification services for 35 domestic packaging equipment items and 11 categories of special materials. The industrialization base project constitutes a vital step for the company to translate its technological strengths into mass production capacity.

"To use a vivid analogy, the journey from R&D through pilot testing to mass production is like a relay race. No matter how fast the first runner goes, the team will lose speed during the handover if the second runner does not start in advance," a relevant person in charge of Hubei Hsingchen Technology Co., Ltd stated. The advance layout of the industrialization base aims to achieve seamless linkage among technological R&D, pilot verification and large-scale production, and build up sufficient production capacity before the arrival of the industrial boom.

Under the plan, the main workshop will complete structural capping by the end of this year. Equipment move-in will kick off at the end of June 2027, and production lines will be commissioned before the end of September 2027. Phase I will reach full production capacity in 2028. Upon full completion of both phases, the base will attract more than 2,000 high-end semiconductor talents and achieve a monthly wafer output of 80,000 pieces. It will supply production capacity for domestic high-performance chips used in artificial intelligence, computing, intelligent driving and other sectors. Meanwhile, it will drive the agglomeration of upstream and downstream enterprises covering equipment, materials, chip design and end applications in Optics Valley, fostering an advanced packaging industrial ecosystem valued at over RMB 50 billion.