Renesas Technology (China) will increase its annual production of semiconductor chips from the current 50 million to 90 million by the end of 2008.

"8-bit chips used to be the major driver in the Chinese market and now the country is demanding more and more 16-bit and 32-bit chips," chief executive and managing officer of Renesas China Masahiro Yamamura told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

"To keep up with production, we will hire another 150 developers and designers," he said.

Renesas, a leading manufacturer of semiconductor devices, has two factories in China, one in Beijing and the other in Suzhou near Shanghai.

"We have no plan to set up new factories in China at this stage," he said. "We will reach the target by improving production efficiency or opening new assembly lines."

China will become Renesas's largest production base for semiconductor chips, he said.

Sales in China represented about 10 percent of Renesas's global revenue of 952.6 billion Japanese yen in fiscal 2006.

Renesas Technology Corp., based in Tokyo, is a joint venture between Hitachi and Mitsubishi.