Powerchip Technology's joint venture fab in Hefei, China will be ready for trial production in June 2017, according to Frank Huang, CEO for the Taiwan-based pure-play foundry.

Production at the JV fab will initially target LCD driver ICs, with manufacturing capacity of 20,000 wafer starts per month, said Huang, adding that the overall production capacity at the facility will rise to 40,000 wafers per month.

Powerchip will also shift a portion of the orders placed with its Taiwan fabs to the new Hefei plant when the fabs run at full capacity, Huang indicated.

Huang also reiterated Powerchip has no plans to build DRAM production lines in China.

Named Nexchip Semiconductor, the JV between Powerchip and the Hefei city government of China's Anhui province is a 12-inch IC foundry which will be engaged in the manufacture of mainly display driver ICs and image sensors.

A groundbreaking ceremony for Powerchip's JV fab in China took place in October 2015. Earlier in the year, Powerchip announced it had reached an agreement with government-owned Hefei Construction Investment and Holding to form a JV 12-inch foundry running 0.15-micron, 0.11-micron and 90nm manufacturing processes.

Powerchip runs two 12-inch fabs utilized for the manufacture of specialty DRAM memory, LCD driver ICs, power management chips and CMOS image sensors on a contract basis. The fabs are capable of producing a combined 60,000-70,000 wafers per month.

Powerchip also operates a fab dubbed P3 dedicated to producing DRAM memory for Kingston Technology, with monthly capacity of nearly 30,000 wafers. Powerchip uses 3xnm process technology to manufacture the chips for Kingston, and will transition to a newer 2xnm node in 2017.