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Texas Instruments' Chengdu packaging and testing facility to start production soon, accelerating chip delivery again

Update time : 2022-11-10 09:49:35

Analog chip giant Texas Instruments is expanding its investment in China, with the expansion of its Chengdu manufacturing base packaging/testing facility coming on stream.

At this year's Expo, Texas Instruments announced that the second packaging/testing facility (CDAT2) in the Texas Instruments Chengdu manufacturing base will complete the installation and commissioning of its equipment within the year and will start production in the coming months.
Founded in 1930 and headquartered in Texas, Texas Instruments specialises in analogue and embedded chips and is one of the world's oldest chip companies, with TSMC founder Zhang Zhongmou and SMIC founder Zhang Ruking having served in the company. Texas Instruments entered China in 1986 with R&D centres and product line teams in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing, a manufacturing base in Chengdu, Sichuan and two product distribution centres. 2021, Texas Instruments had total revenue of US$18.34 billion.
Texas Instruments' Chengdu, Sichuan manufacturing site is its largest investment in China and is currently undergoing expansion. Zhao Mengqing, director of Texas Instruments' Chengdu packaging and testing facility, said that the Chengdu manufacturing base in Sichuan, which was built in 2010, is the only manufacturing base of Texas Instruments in China and is also an "end-to-end" base. The so-called end-to-end, which includes wafer manufacturing, testing, bump processing and final packaging/testing, has become a major base point for Texas Instruments' global manufacturing and product distribution.
"Chengdu is manufacturing products to be sent to three relatively large product distribution centres in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Singapore, which are sold globally, not just in China." Zhao Mengqing said the CDAT2 plant, which will be put into operation this time, began construction in 2018 and is expected to double the packaging and testing capacity of the Chengdu manufacturing base when it is fully operational to speed up response to customer demand.
At the same time as Texas Instruments landed the Chengdu CDAT2 facility, it also completed an automation upgrade project for its Shanghai product distribution centre. According to Texas Instruments, the work in the Shanghai product distribution centre, which was previously done mainly by hand, has been upgraded to an automated facility with robots and other advanced equipment. The automation upgrade will provide Texas Instruments with more accurate inventory management, allowing orders to be fulfilled faster and more efficiently. The Texas Instruments Shanghai product distribution centre will also provide more efficient synergies with the Shenzhen product distribution centre, which opened last year, to strengthen the company's local operations.
Zhao Mengqing said the two investments will greatly enhance support for Texas Instruments' customers in the Asia Pacific sub-region. "Texas Instruments has spent a lot of effort this year to upgrade its product distribution centre in Shanghai, which has gone from 4,000 square metres of operational space to 9,000 square metres." At present, he said, both the Shenzhen and Shanghai distribution centres are basically able to deliver to local customers on the same day and to customers in other parts of China on the next day.
In the "lack of core wave" set off in 2020, a number of Texas Instruments' analog chip products were in short supply, once causing a surge in the market. At present, with the lack of core in the consumer sector gradually alleviated, the demand for chips for the automotive sector is still high. Some car company sources said, because the global supply chain is still unstable, plus the semiconductor industry production adjustment, equipment procurement need some time, it is estimated that the car chip to achieve a completely normal supply of about 2 to 3 years.
At present, Texas Instruments has more than 150 applications in the automotive field close to more than 300 reference designs, supplying all car companies around the world. Cai Zheng, general manager of the automotive business unit of Texas Instruments China, introduced that with the help of Texas Instruments' chip solutions, automotive customers can complete their designs more quickly and can compress the development cycle of the whole vehicle from 24 months to 12 months.
The global semiconductor industry is entering a downward cycle, after a number of semiconductor manufacturing companies have lowered their capital expenditure plans. Texas Instruments, which uses its own factories for about 80 per cent of its chips and outsources the rest, is continuing to expand production. Dave Pahl, vice president and manager of the investor department at Texas Instruments, said the company is expanding its chip manufacturing capacity to meet the long-term trend of growing demand for chips in the end market.
It is reported that Texas Instruments is located in Richardson, Texas (Richardson) RFAB2 factory has started production, located in Utah, Lee Hai (Lehi) LFAB factory is expected to start production later this year, while in Sherman, Texas (Sherman) SM-1 and SM-2 two wafer fabs are also on schedule for construction.
On October 25, Texas Instruments released its third quarter results, achieving revenue of US$5.241 billion, up 13% year-on-year, and net profit of US$2.295 billion, up 18% year-on-year. Although the overall results were slightly above market expectations, the financial forecast for the fourth quarter was less than expected. Texas Instruments expects fourth-quarter revenue of US$4.4 billion to US$4.8 billion, impacted by slowing chip demand.
Rich Templeton, chairman and CEO of Texas Instruments, said that the weak demand for consumer electronics is also spreading to the entire industrial sector, but he stressed that the market demand for automotive chips remains strong.

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