(Yicai Global) July 24 -- Manufacturing of Chinese microchips grew along with the country's innovations in the sector.

China churned out 85 billion pieces of integrated circuits during the first half of this year, up 15 percent from a year earlier, Huang Libin, a deputy director at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told at a press briefing today.

Efforts from all sides have sparked an impetus over the recent years, which explains the robust growth in China's semiconductor sector, Huang said, adding that the sales volume hovered at CNY560 billion (USD82.4 billion) last year, which was more than double that in 2012.

China made breakthroughs in relevant core technologies, including a 2-generation leap in the chip design and a 1.5-generation improvement in the manufacturing process, as well as applied the 32 and 28 nanometer processes in large-scale mass production, Huang said.

Microchips are key to building the fifth-generation wireless network which would not only make the internet much faster but also enable China to step into a new era of the Internet of Things with features such as car-to-car networking. Beijing has called turning the country self-supplied in the chips front as a top priority to stop spending USD200 billion on such components each year.

China hopes to establish close cooperation with chipmakers from each country to jointly tap into the best performance of semiconductors, said Wen Ku, director of the telecom development department at the MIIT.

Editor: Emmi Laine