Apparently this is all due to increased orders coming in from Qualcomm and Leadcore. Meanwhile the company's supply of venerable 40nm chips continues to fall short of demand, mostly because the technology has such a wide range of applications.

According to Digitimes, SMIC is flat out at its 8-inch fabs, the sources indicated. Orders there have come from Qualcomm, HiSilicon and Fingerprint Cards (FPC) and they have sucked up 60-70 percent of SMIC's overall 8-inch production capacity.

SMIC has won contracts from Qualcomm and HiSilicon to manufacture power management chips using its 0.18-micron technology, while FPC wants the chips for its fingerprint sensors. 

The company has poured money into capital investment this year doubling the $1.6 billion allocated for 2015. Most of that is for building additional capacity at its 8- and 12-inch fabs.

In  November SMIC announced that construction of a new 12-inch fab in Shenzhen had started and when that was finished it would churn out 40,000 wafers monthly.  In October, SMIC announced an expansion project for its 8-inch fab in Tianjin, which will be capable of producing 150,000 wafers monthly compared with the current 45,000 units. SMIC also broke ground for a new 12-inch fab in Shanghai in October. The 12-inch fab is scheduled to go into volume production for 14nm chips in 2018 with monthly capacity of 70,000 wafers.