HiSilicon Facing Restrictions in Using TSMC Foundry Services
China appears to be supporting Tsinghua Unigroup to achieve its system semiconductor ambition as Huawei is groaning under U.S. sanctions.
Many employees of HiSilicon, a fabless subsidiary of Huawei, have recently moved to Unisoc, a Chinese fabless semiconductor company that produces chipsets for mobile phones. Previously called Spreadtrum Communications, the company was acquired by Tsinghua Unigroup in 2013.
Unisoc is producing the 5G application processor (AP) called “T7520.” It is the second-largest fabless company in China that placed 10th among the world's top 10 fabless companies selected by IC Insights in 2017. Since Tsinghua Unigroup’s acquisition, the company’s technological prowess has been rapidly improving.
Industry watchers expect that the pace of HiSilicon engineers move to Unisoc will accelerate as HiSilicon’s use of TSMC’s foundry process will be restricted from the fourth quarter of 2020. Given that HiSilicon was one of the top five in the global AP market with a 11.7 percent share in 2019, its high-quality manpower can upgrade Unisoc’s technological capability quickly.
Some analysts say that China will once again start to promote the Chinese system semiconductor industry by transferring Huawei's technology to Unisoc. This picture is not unimaginable, given that Huawei is a de facto state-owned company that has grown with support from the Chinese government, while Tsinghua Unigroup is controlled by Tsinghua Holdings, which is a wholly owned company of Tsinghua University.
Many experts predict that the promotion of the Chinese system semiconductor industry will pose a significant threat to Samsung Electronics. China is providing support for SMIC, a foundry company, and various fabless companies in addition to UNSOC to upgrade their technologies.
"Although it will take some time for Unisoc to catch up with Korean companies in AP technology, the situation will change if they recruit a large number of workers from HiSilicon," a semiconductor industry analyst said. "The key is how much effort Tsinghua Unigroup, which is struggling to develop memory semiconductors, can put into system semiconductors."