(Yicai) Aug. 20 -- Lingang Special Area, a key testing ground for economic and trade policies within the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, has become a magnet for frontier technology projects, with the five inked yesterday bringing the total amount invested in the area since its inception six years ago to CNY730 billion (USD101.6 billion).

Lingang has attracted 679 major high-tech projects over the past six years, the area’s management committee also revealed yesterday at a signing ceremony held on its sixth anniversary for five major industrial projects with a combined investment of over CNY40 billion (USD5.6 billion).

The five new projects are for advanced chip packaging, heavy-duty gas turbines, a pilot brain-computer interface testing platform, underwater robots, and integrated circuit equipment research, development, and production.

The implementation of the advanced chip packaging and IC equipment projects will help Lingang and Shanghai enhance their strategic status as a key IC industry hub, said Li Xiangcong, director of the management committee’s high-tech affairs division.

“Lingang’s greatest competitive advantage is its ecosystem,” he pointed out. “The key to a new sector’s growth is its industrial ecosystem, low-cost entrepreneurial space, and angel funding.”

The latest projects are important for incubating tech innovation and positioning Lingang in future industries, according to Li. In particular, the brain-chip platform should help Lingang nurture more innovative ventures.

SJ Semiconductor Jiangyin, the company that penned the deal for the advanced chip packaging project, is the first middle-end-of-line pure play foundry equipped with front-end-of-line manufacturing and quality systems.

SJSemi decided to invest in Lingang for its advanced core technologies, which will help promote its project's research, development, and industrialization, Vice President Zhou Yan told Yicai, adding that the project is expected to become the Jiangyin-based company’s major business for the next five to 10 years or longer.

SJSemi is the only Chinese mainland firm using an advanced chip packaging technology that integrates multiple semiconductors, such as computer, storage, and input-output chips, in its mass production process. This tech, which enhances chip performance while reducing size, lies between the traditional two- dimensional packaging and 3D stacked packaging and is known as ‘2.5D.’

Zhou explained that SJSemi's Lingang project will package different types of chips together based on 3D technology, increasing their connection density to boost performance.

For applications that require high computing power, such as artificial intelligence and automotive electronics. chip packaging increasingly needs to move in the 3D direction, Zhou noted, adding that this enables SJSemi to find more opportunities for business collaborations in Lingang.

This is because Lingang boasts a good business environment and well-positioned upstream and downstream supply chains, allowing SJSemi to easily find partners to work with along the industry chain, she pointed out.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione