YASC Wuhan Base made another new progress on December 18, 2024 — the first-batch equipment move-in ceremony was successfully held at the Optics Valley Science Island. Chen Zhongguo, President of YASC, and the company’s key leaders and guests were present, and witnessed the grand event, rising to new challenges.

In the semiconductor industry, plant construction is generally divided into four stages: equipment selection, equipment move-in, process verification and product power-on. This equipment move-in was an important part in the plant construction process, marking that YASC Wuhan Base will enter a new stage of process verification and the countdown is on for full production.

YASC Wuhan Base has constantly refreshed the construction “progress bar” in accordance with the three principles of “safety first, quality first, speed first” since its official groundbreaking on September 1, 2023. The project team actively responded to many headwinds such as freezing rain and high temperature, worked around the clock, and made records one after another. It took less than ten months to build the plant from driving the first pile to topping out the main structure, setting new speeds for ultra-large project construction with CNY10B+ investments.

Moreover, the Wuhan Base project not only achieved groundbreaking and structure topping-out as planned, but also moved in equipment far ahead of schedule. The equipment move-in covers all aspects of chip manufacturing, including thin film deposition, ion implantation, lithography and etching, which will lay a solid foundation for Wuhan Base to build full-chain production capabilities and accelerate power-on for mass production.

Chen Zhongguo, President of YASC, expressed gratitude in the speech session to all the participants in the Wuhan Base project for their hard work over the past year. YASC has surmounted unimaginable difficulties one after another since its reorganization in May 2022, he also noted. In particular, the Wuhan Base project will also work a miracle in the development history of the semiconductor industry, a miracle of the company building a large modern semiconductor manufacturing plant entirely on its own. This cannot happen without the concerted efforts and support of all the YASC departments, teams and partners.

The first-batch equipment move-in signals a new stage of production capacity building in the Wuhan Base project, he accented. Next, the project will also face a greater deal of harder challenges in process verification and product power-on. However, just like previously overcoming hurdles, he believes, YASC employees will prevail challenges and create countless new chapters as always.

The journey has begun. The YASC Wuhan Base project is now moving fast with construction including equipment installation and debugging, and is expected to power-on for mass production in May 2025. Looking ahead, YASC will paddle the hardest to sprint all-out for the Wuhan Base Phase 1 commissioning and higher, farther goals!