MILPITAS, CA – China’s IC wafer capacity growth accelerated 14% in 2019 and 21% in 2020 and is expected to grow at least 17% in 2021, according to SEMI.

Taiwan had the second strongest growth in 2019 and 2020, with 3% to 4%, respectively.

From 2019 through 2021, China will have increased wafer capacity for memory 95%, foundry 47% and analog 29%. Foundry will represent the largest gain, reaching 2 million wpm. Memory will follow with about 1.5 million wpm, followed by analog at more than 120,000 wpm.

For the forecast period, Chinese-owned companies will add almost 60% capacity for foundries, the most of all sectors, says SEMI. SMIC, Hua Hong Semiconductor, Nexchip, XMC and Hua Li Microelectronics are driving growth.

From 2019 to 2021, Chinese-owned firms will ramp memory capacity to 300,000 wpm from nearly zero. Yangtze Memory Technology and ChangXin Memory Technologies (Innotron) are driving sharp increases with 3-D NAND and DRAM capacity.

Internationally, TSMC and UMC are driving the largest share of foundry growth, while Samsung, SK Hynix and Intel are leading gains in memory capacity.