Propelled by booming demand from cryptocurrency market, China’s pure-play foundry service market jerked up by 41% from a year ago to hit US$10.6 billion in sales, according to U.S. market reserch firm IC Insights.

That sales volume accounted for 19% of the global foundry market, suggesting that China is rapidly emerging as the world’s second largest pure-play foundry market, trailing behind the American market, home to world’s top-tier fabless chip makers and chip design houses.

Hotly growing design activities among Chinese fabless chip makers were the major contributor to the spectacular growth in the pure-play foundry chip making boom. 

As chinese fabless chip makers are upping their chip design activities to meet local demand, especially for crypto-currency mining vehicle GPUs, global pure-play foundry service companies are flooding in the Chinese market.

Major pure-play foundry service companies are forecast to chalk up double digit growth year-on-year in the Chinese market, including UMC, TSMC, GlobalFoundries, PowerChip, and TowerJazz.

TSMC turns out to be one the largest beneficiaries of the chip design boom, as Chinese fabless chip makers have been outsourcing most of their chip fabrication to the Taiwanese pure-play foundry contract chip maker.

TSMC’s foundry service sales to Chines fabless chip makers are reported to contribute the most to its sales in 2018, scoring US$6 billion, 61% up from a year ago.