Photo taken on Sept. 6, 2020 shows a digital light-field chip exhibited during the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Zhang Chenlin)

Chinese semiconductor chipmaker Loongson Technology filed an IPO application on the Shanghai STAR market on Monday aiming to raise 3.5 billion yuan ($542 million), according to the company's prospectus. 

The IPO proceeds will be invested in the R&D and industrialization of advanced processing chips and high-performance and general-purpose graphics processor chips, and supplement the company's liquidity, said the prospectus. 

The Loongson series is one of the earliest general-purpose processor (GPU) series developed in China, with its research and development stretching back to 2001 at the Institute of Computing Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the company began market-oriented restructuring to industrialize the Loongson processor research and development achievements in 2010, according to the prospectus. 

Loongson has achieved independent innovation within its instruction system as the company launched an autonomous command system "LoongArch", which has passed intellectual property evaluation of a domestic authoritative third party agency.

The company's operating income reached 1.08 billion yuan in 2020, increasing from 193.25 million yuan in 2018. 

Loongson will move to build up its corporate value from four aspects in the future, including continuously improving the technology and processor performance, independently researching and developing chips in order to support processor, improvements, and further expanding the value of the supply chain and gradually improving the company's supply chain autonomy. 

China has been working on developing the semiconductor sector with a view to addressing bottleneck issues in the integrated circuit industry by investing in the education of the field.

Shenzhen Technology University cooperated with China's leading chip manufacturer Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co (SMIC) to establish a school of integrated circuits in June, and Tsinghua University, one of China's top universities, established the School of Integrated Circuits in April, which is the country's first university to target research and training of technicians in semiconductors.

Global Times