Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) announced on September 16 that the company has signed a letter of intent with China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (CICIIF) and a subsidiary of Qualcomm to invest a total of US$280 million in SJ Semiconductor (SJsemi), a joint venture between SMIC and Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology (JCET).

The investment will be utilized to accelerate the establishment of China's first 12-inch wafer bumping line, and assist SJsemi in expanding its production scale and improving its advanced manufacturing capabilities, SMIC indicated.

SJsemi will serve as an outsourced assembly and test house specializing in the middle-end-of-line process focusing on advanced bumping production, SMIC said. Founded in August 2014, SJsemi is located in Jiangyin, Jiangsu province.

"Within one year of its establishment, SJsemi has already successfully commissioned its production process and passed production qualification and is expected to go into mass production at the beginning of 2016," SMIC noted in a statement.

"This round of investment, if completed, will help expand our production capacity and accelerate the construction progress while demonstrating the strong confidence our investors have in the future of SJsemi," said Dong Cui, CEO of SJsemi, in the same statement. "This will help bridge SMIC's 28nm process technology and JCET's back-end packaging and assembly capabilities, to create an advanced IC manufacturing supply chain in China."

Also in the statement, CICIIF GM Ding Wenwu indicated "following the investment in SMIC, a front-end manufacturing leader in China, and assisting JCET with its international acquisition, our investment in SJsemi will promote and build China's advanced IC manufacturing supply chain in front-end manufacturing, middle-end processes, and back-end packaging services."

"This is in line with the direction of our industrial investment fund and fulfilling the goals outlined in China's IC Industry Development Policy," Ding continued.