The second phase construction of the National Memory Base located at the East Lake High-tech Development Zone -- also known as Optics Valley of China in Wuhan city, capital of Central China's Hubei province -- started on June 20, according to local officials.

They said it was part of the continued strengthening of the zone's "IC-displays-terminals-internet" industry chain.

The National Memory Base project is being jointly funded by Tsinghua Unigroup, the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, Hubei Science Technology Investment Group and the Hubei Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund and plans are to build 3D NAND flash memory chip factories in two phases.

According to zone officials, the first phase of the project started construction at the end of 2016 and the factories built from it now produce 32-layer and 64-layer memory chip products. Officials said the facility has successfully developed the world's first QLC-based 128-layer 3D NAND flash memory chip.

Officials said that in phase one production has reached 100,000 chips per month and when operations start on phase two the production will be 200,000 chips per month -- taking the total design output of the completed facility to 300,000 chips per month.