According to the latest authoritative summary of Professor Wei Shaojun, chairman of IC Design Branch of China Semiconductor Industry Association, in 2017, the global semiconductor industry has swept away the downturn and haze of the past few years and ushered in the rare climax of development in recent years. The major international consulting agencies It is generally optimistic that global semiconductor sales in 2017 are expected to exceed 400 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of nearly 20% over the previous year. He said that this global semiconductor industry has experienced a substantial jump in growth, though there are factors such as the rise of bulk products such as memory, but also From the other side reflects the global semiconductor market demand is strong, the production capacity of the reality of China's IC design industry in the global high-end manufacturing capacity under the serious shortage of circumstances, maintained a momentum of rapid growth, performance continues to rise and become the growth rate in recent years The highest year, in a nutshell: 'The industrial scale continues to expand, the regional development is brilliant, the pace of product innovation is obvious, and the quality of development is constantly improving.'
Wei Shaojun pointed out that in 2017 China IC industry sales are expected to be 194.6 billion yuan, up from 152.8 billion yuan in 2016 an increase of 28.15% This is our fastest growing in recent years in the current lack of IDM in China under the premise of design responsibility Will bear the heavy responsibility for the development of China's integrated circuit products. The past two years, we have placed our hopes on the rapid growth of China's chip design industry through international mergers and acquisitions, but the harsh facts tell us that this is a barrier .Not we do not want to cooperate, and It is people who think we are trying to curb us.Chip design industry is the industry most in need of open and cooperation, we will be open and continue to cooperate sincerely with colleagues at home and abroad to find a win-win development.
In 2017, Opportunities Face More Opportunities Challenges 2018: How will the design, EDA, design services and OEM companies in the IC industry chain look to China's semiconductor industry by 2018? The interviewees are as follows Without distinction):
Dai Weimin, chairman and president of VeriSilicon, Synopsys global vice president and Asia-Pacific president Lin Rongjian, Luo Zhenqiu, vice president of business development at TSMC, Lee Chu, Kilopas vice president of sales, Xu Yun, general manager of Cadence China, HLMC Huali, vice president of Scholar, CEO Jimmy Zhang Jing-Yang Moore,Core technology products director Ying Ying, Ling Lin, general manager of Mentor China, Lin Weisheng, senior director of UMC China Sales, Ruicheng core micro-CEO Xiang Jianjun, Yang Xiaodong, deputy general manager of Huada nine days, Zhixiang Jiang Tian Yi, general manager of science and technology.
How to further achieve or catch up with the international advanced level?
Lin Jung-jian: I think there is such a base in China, and it is based on the fields of mobile terminals and surveillance. Based on this, the capacity of China's entire market and its breadth of applications are very impressive. I am very optimistic about the corresponding application of AI and are divided into Several categories: a class of AI chip protection AI IP. The application of another AI, these two points complement each other in China in 2018 and even in the next few years there will be great growth in some areas, China and even the United States. In addition, China Cars are the largest in the world, and China has developed rapidly in the entire AI technology field, and has not lagged behind the advanced countries.With the market plus technology, the past moves accounted for the second half, because late, and now China in the AI Dai Weimin: I think there are two bonus you want to see, one is the capital dividend, there is a manufacturing bonus, I think these two bonuses are very good for the design company help.
Luo Zhenqiu: domestic business enthusiasm is now rising to TSMC customers, for example, we in the world every week will be more than a new customer, including a very high proportion of Chinese customers in China continue to have new companies to contact us, their products But also a wide range of, this is what I say is passionate, will chase the more long-term and ideal thing.At present, I see the more technical strength and passion, but also have the funds to grow up earlier than most of the consumption Category of items. Consumers covered a wide range of security is also considered consumer, and this is a big hot, AI is also one hand. China has accumulated more than a decade of technology is slowly results, and now poor industrialization The domestic industrialization of many capabilities and industrialization have the necessary knowledge and experience is not enough, this may be the next step we must find ways to strengthen the place, so that products can be industrialized.
Lee Chu: Industrialization must be co-operation. At present, everyone in China is still in a competitive position. There are not enough platforms to take this exchange of resources or cooperation, and resources can not be combined together. For example, microprocessors and sensors have large Of the market, how to better together, with our customers come into contact with each other, this is a new area. AI we can not be underestimated, because it is relatively large macro, relatively high-end technology, but generally Application of consumer products are not all go high-end line, storage + sensor together, this market is very large, the market will be more and more.
Xu Yun: In the field of AI, China has several leading positions in the world. China is the second largest AI economy in the world. It is reflected in three aspects: one is investment, the other is the number of companies and the number of patents owned , We are both the second largest in the world, and very much ahead of the third, which gives us the opportunity to catch up with the international advanced level.In addition, there are also many opportunities for Chinese local enterprises in the autonomous controllable direction, including the concept of A number of market areas such as artificial intelligence, image recognition, security monitoring, etc. The domestic direction in the system is a great advantage, such as Hikvision, Dahua are the world leader in intelligent monitoring system leader. How to take advantage of our System advantages to develop our chip area, we can think carefully.
Zhang Jing Yang: catching up is really quite difficult, after all, we started much later than the United States and Europe for many years, they have worked hard for many years in the market, such as memory, CPU we do not want to say in 10 years, it is difficult to catch up. We also do have some advantages. We have a first-mover advantage. We can not see some foreign enterprises or the market is too small and the margins are too small for them to do. This is an opportunity for domestic manufacturers.
He Ying: Now many companies in the Internet of Things market to do miniaturization of smart chips, in this regard we have a good foreign application market environment and investment climate, I believe that as long as there is an application market, capital investment, on this aspect Can catch up with advanced foreign companies and technologies.Yang Xiaodong: From our customers, mainly facing two pressures, on the one hand how to make products, on the other hand, how to improve the product after the gross margin.Now the product updates Too fast change, enterprises are facing great pressure, how to continue to grow is also a problem, many companies have developed one or two more successful products, the follow-up performance of sustainable development is facing a big problem. This aspect requires a very long Accumulation of the process.First of all, and then quantitative change can produce qualitative change.On the other hand, China is still lacking in small screen, and now China has gradually developed such advantages panel makers, driving the upstream and downstream related industries, in the new display is Easier to form a breakthrough.
Jiang Tianyi: IC industry to rapid rapid growth in the short term difficult, the IC industry itself is very large investment, the cycle will be very long, its capital requirements, in particular, to do some high-end chip pressure on funds, technical pressure, including Some market pressures and so on will be very large.Therefore, this breakthrough point may be divided into small and medium-sized companies and large companies.For small and medium-sized companies, if you want to survive, live better, nothing more than two aspects, or is more unique technology, Either he cut into a particular market, there is no such market was found by these large companies if he cut into such a market to find some unique market, the development will be better for large companies, there is a certain accumulation of funds, the market On the one hand, on the other hand is to migrate to the high-end market, and now many companies are also doing things in this area. The bigger problem is that one is the talent, how to rationalize the use of personnel, how to introduce some of the better foreign At the same time, but also to retain these talents, you want to get a breakthrough which is a very important point.
Shu Qi: With the rapid development of China's IC industry, the gap between technology and the world is shrinking, and some areas are even ahead of the world. In some emerging applications such as robotics, drone, face recognition, artificial intelligence, electric Cars, etc., will bring great opportunities for domestic enterprises, we are all at the same starting line, if you have a certain degree of technology, the road go right you will be successful.
Ling Lin: So far, the growth rate of China's IC market is still huge, and this pace has never stopped since 2000. Now it seems that domestic enterprises have to go global in terms of their competitiveness and capability. Imitation to innovation requires a process from the industrial chain point of view, China's industrial chain has not been particularly perfect, such as cutting-edge manufacturing, low power consumption options for small, limited production capacity.Therefore, the current industry chain restrictions From the manufacturing, design, personnel, etc. Breakthrough point can be considered from two aspects, one is the demand for large-scale markets such as industrial control, intelligent monitoring, one is a special market applications such as national security.
Xiang Jianjun: Our customers are mainly small and medium-sized enterprises, from our point of view, these small and medium-sized enterprises in order to survive to achieve a breakthrough, you can consider these points: The first point, to do a substitute for imported products; Second, the smaller teams, if they want to survive, should not compete in a mature market. Instead, they must start some new applications and innovate areas. This will be at the same starting line with the big ones, just by looking Who run faster, so that when it is developed, there are opportunities for acquisition by big companies.These new applications and markets are not the rich you can do this company, is with your idea, is with your design is There are a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises that will survive in the Internet of Things in the spring of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Looking forward to 2018 China's semiconductor industry which hot?
Lin Jung-jian: Synopsys currently optimizes and strengthens the areas of: artificial intelligence, automotive electronics, and information security.With the emergence of more and more emerging companies in the Chinese market, and the country's strategic layout for artificial intelligence and automotive electronics, we believe that the future China's chip design industry will gradually develop in both directions.For China's overall IC design industry, we can feel their growing design capabilities, such as HiSilicon Kirin chips, Spreadtrum's latest design, etc. I believe as more Emerging companies such as artificial intelligence and automotive electronics emerge, just as the current Cambrian, horizon, China's local IC design industry must be more rapid development.
Dai Weimin: As far as the AI terminal application is concerned, domestic monitoring and safety are just needed. In addition, there are applications of unmanned equipment.
Luo Zhenqiu: In addition to mobile computing, now high-speed computing, Internet of things, automotive electronics, which is that we see in either China or the world will be developing very fast direction, just said that in previous times China did not catch up with the ability and financial resources in the future in these applications, China and other countries and regions are starting at the same time, and even have some advantages, because we have a vast market.China has the largest automotive electronics market, and the Internet of Things Also need a large number of population-based, more people the higher the market value of things.
Lee Chu: In the field of communications, China has begun to take the lead role in formulating 5G standards and combining communications with the Internet of Things will be a big market, and now a lot of computing needs to be done at the terminals, so the entire semiconductor, memory, processing Devices have great needs, coupled with the overall security requirements, but also a big market, not just to say that the general Internet of Things, such as automotive electronics is part of the Internet of Things, if the communications and Internet of things ended up, the entire Xu Yun: optimistic about the development of the entire IC industry in China, especially the next round of large funds have passed the examination and approval, we can see that the investment in this industry in China will be more To the larger In addition, on the hot applications, through cooperation and exchange with the system vendors, we see the focus of the following years everyone's attention, including the AI, the Internet of Things and the Industrial Internet of Things, automotive electronics.
Zhang Jingyang: I very much agree with Xu's general view, it seems that there is not much difference on the 2018 domestic chip replacement, in addition to chip production, manufacturing, equipment, materials, demand continues to grow rapidly, the current domestic production for about 15% of the future Will soon be raised to 20% or higher level.From the hot point of application, I am optimistic about some small points of smart hardware and wearable devices, these points will bring subdivided chip demand, in the past we do the chip The market first, and then do chip service in this market, but now see some new trend is the terminal first, for example, a small company in Shanghai called 70 step, the main car intelligent rear-view mirror, set up last year, this year has 2 billion valuation , At present, they are No. 1 in the country and have shipped more than 1 million units, which is different from the game rules of less than 10 million that we are familiar with in the handset market. "After taking the first place, system manufacturers began to think about how Through customized chip solutions to improve the moat.The second case is the world's number one drone company in Xinjiang, there are now more than 100 chip team, from the earliest procurement, custom chips to do drone, Up to now, we have been pursuing the independent controllable core chips and the security and stability of the supply chain, and we see that many system vendors will kill chips.
He Ying: From an IP company's perspective, we see some new popular applications including the data encryption industry, blockchain, etc. As an IP vendor, we are also willing to actively participate in this area of technology research, the current blockchain industry is not yet It belongs to the very mainstream industry, but it has many advantages, behind the technical basis there are many places worth absorbing and application.Secondly, the national security chip, because this industry is rather special, not suitable for the use of foreign chips or IP to Do our own encryption chip, which itself has security risks, the future will be made with more domestic IP chip made in the field of domestic security encryption. Core Technology also attaches great importance to this area, invest a lot of research and development costs.
Yang Xiaodong: First of all, from the customer, it should be a little more than two types of products, one is to do more high-end, large-scale SoC, cell phone chips before more, but many are doing artificial intelligence chips recently. Internet of Things ultra-low-power products.From the nine days of the industry, the problem we see is now more and more attention on the yield, the previous concern is how to make this thing out, and now attention How to improve its yield, improve their gross profit margin, which is some of the problems we see.
Dr. Jiang Tianyi: In the past two years, everyone has become more and more concerned about the AI chip, more and more start-ups. For example, Cambrian Technology, with over one billion US dollars of high valuation to become the world's first AI chip field A unicorn start-up company in the next two years AI company will develop very well.The second trend is that we will gradually from the low-end market to the high-end market.
Lin Weisheng: The main growth point next year should be still in the field of mobile phones, mobile phone next more important changes in the man-machine interface, we can see that Apple's new generation of mobile phones have face recognition, the future of some mobile phone manufacturers will also have development in this area In the mobile phone panel, the next 3 years will also be developed.Another is the AI, 5G applications, including cloud applications.Consumption areas The next hot spot is more computing speed, more ways to connect wirelessly, Bluetooth, More intelligent, the market is fragmented in this area, but there will be some explosive growth in certain areas next year.
Ling Lin: Mentor's point of view is that there will be a big increase in the semiconductor industry this year, reaching 300 billion US dollars a few years ago is a breakthrough, this year to 400 billion US dollars in line, the main contribution from the storage market. 3D-NAND Flash and solid state Storage master chips may have increased, and now many companies are also concerned about this area.In addition AI algorithm integration into the chip process, there will be some unicorn company, our customers will buy a large number of these innovative products For further research and development.From the system point of view, the first is a big data center, based on different architectures will have a better chip growth.At the end of the Internet of Things data acquisition market, mainly to see two types, one is Industrial category, one is the car, these two areas will have a relatively large growth.
Xiang Jianjun: Based on our observations on some data, apart from artificial intelligence and storage, we clearly feel that this year's growth in the field of IoT, low-power Internet of Things, or data related to the Internet has increased by several times. The problem we face in networking is that everyone has been paying attention, but the market is never going to end up. The Internet of Things (IoT) market needs a trigger point. In 2018, we feel that the whole system connection of the Internet of Things is almost built up.
How the industry chain more organic collaboration?
Wei Shaojun's report pointed out that 88.62% of the 1380 domestic chip design companies in 2017 are small and micro enterprises with less than 100 persons. To be able to achieve the goal of "small sparrows and all-pervading" is undoubtedly a huge challenge. Cooperation between the industry chain more and more important.So supporting the industrial chain ready? Foundry and supply chain and how to support these massive chip design company? Today these small and medium chip companies get enough resources and support it?
In designing services, this is an indispensable part of the domestic enterprises that are weak in design capability, or system vendors in the field of chip design, or want to outsource some modules in the SoC chipset to reduce the pressure. "Dai Weimin said: We used to serve a lot of chip companies, and now we need to serve the target companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Amazon and Google. They want to do the chip business very much. They are leading the industry and need to customize. Chip customers are now moving toward the system level, and I want to emphasize that we absolutely do not compete with customers, not brand products, we have a perfect IP core, and in some areas are very leading chip companies go up, first A board made of chips, write software, do a lot of system things.When the chip company to go up, the system company down, but do not have the chip team, so look for us to design service company.Go up, Companies that go down are likely to find us. '
Zhang Jing Yang said that allowing China to have a hard chip, which is the dream and vision of the Moore elite will be the next killer market after the smart phone, driving the outbreak of the semiconductor industry.Compared to mobile phones, the Internet of Things has a Great Features: Fragmentation. To match these fragmented end needs, chip design companies are also changing. If there is such a service, there are thousands of experienced back-end engineers to choose from, booking a back-end team Like booking a hotel room, engineers' timelines, past customer reviews, tooling experience at a node clearly and on call, does a chip company still need its own full-time back-end team? Is it possible that some chip companies will be End RTL design, not necessarily GDS today.This is the original intention and vision of Moore elite design service.He pointed out that more and more chip companies will choose to outsource back-end design, supply chain services, will be Moore The focus of the elite in 2018, hoping to ease the supply chain pain points for small and medium chip companies, through the establishment of a one-stop platform to help small and medium chip companies to facilitate Docking the mainstream foundry, packaging and testing and IP manufacturers to provide MPW, small-scale production of film, IC packaging and testing services; through the supply chain buy, to achieve economies of scale, reduce customer costs.
In terms of tools, EDA, IP indispensable.Lin Lin pointed out that the era of system design automation and intelligence has arrived, the era of complex / super system design has also arrived.Once the previous chip and system design is inefficient, and now the development of IP makes We can do more complicated system.We used to be EDA company.Now I want to emphasize system design automation, so in the case of system design more and more complex, we need to integrate through various software solutions and chips for the future System brings convenience IC is the core of the electronic system, we provide three major platforms in this regard, the first is a scalable verification platform, the second is to connect all design companies with the chip production bridge, Caliber Design to Silicon Physical verification platform.The third is a yield improvement platform, all the products of small quantities can not occupy the market, so we want to expand the market for Siemens acquisition, they will have more financial aid to Mentor, to help us to do more Challenging some of the future technology development, so I think the system plus IC design, which is our best two core, The entire industry to provide the best, most complete solution.
Lam also said Synopsys has been stepping up its training of local talents and collaborations with colleges and universities. Synopsys is led by some of the world's top experts in integrated circuit design after decades of teaching including 131 undergraduate and graduate programs. Synopsys participated in this year's Integrated The White Paper on the Status of Industrial Talent in the Circuits Industry "has also filled the gap in the domestic talent gap. In addition, new technologies such as FinFET and FDSOI have gained more and more experience in product design and requirements. Synopsys continuously invests in new processes and new processes R & D and in-depth cooperation with global ecosystem customers, we believe Synopsys will ensure that users receive state-of-the-art and secure design support in EDA, IP, artificial intelligence, automotive electronics and information security.
For IP, Lee Chu, vice president of sales at Kilopass, said that Kilopass, which has evolved from simple storage to security over the years, previously may have simply stored its own keys and now has its own system for storing keys. Currently, Kilopass is the industry leader Of storage IP providers, especially in security chip solutions, can provide new and old technologies for the development of China's storage industry.Kilopass already has over 60 granted and pending patents, and from a dozen foundries And Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs). Kilopass also has a sustained increase of more than 150 customers, including the storage of firmware and security codes into calibration data and other critical application information Kilopass Technology covers industrial, automotive, consumer electronics, mobile devices, analog and mixed-signal, and Internet of Things (IoT), etc. Memory is the most basic component and China has been more concerned with flash memory in recent years. IP has not done this part of the in-depth study, mainly because of the need for a lot of long-term accumulation of technology, which is relatively scarce in China. IP is not like selling products about to sell millions, tens of millions, IP is based on the accumulation of basic work, and slowly developed. In the future, I hope everyone will pay more attention to do it more deeply. Domestic mergers and acquisitions to overseas, But not necessarily mergers and acquisitions back to long-term business, which is related to the business itself, to all aspects with the go down have the opportunity.
Xiang Jianjun said that Ruicheng core micro from the beginning of its commitment to low-power voltage domain simulation design, a profound understanding of the process and the ultimate optimization of every detail, in order to have now at the leading domestic level of ultra-low power Consuming analog IoT solution and providing a complete set of ultra-low-power analog IoT solutions for the top-of-the-world commercial Internet of Things chip Suzaku 7100. In the future, Ruicheng Microelectronics will not forget the beginning of the quest for low power consumption in the voltage domain Simulation design to get better grades.
In the field of foundry, new foundries all over the country bloom everywhere, and the international foundries are also striving to lay the advanced production capacity in the mainland, for a time showing a boom in the country .Luo Zhen ball said that in fact, 20 years ago in Taiwan have also had Similar situation, but the cover fab is different from the ordinary factory covered, as long as the money to cover the basic plant and buy a machine on the line, it is difficult to do what technology, where the customer, this is difficult. Process determines the fab's Infrastructure needs, and customers determine the future revenue, and only these two aspects are considered in order to more effectively ensure the return on investment of the fab.For TSMC, it can be said that "the army is not moving, forage first." Customers Of the order is forage, TSMC Why build a factory in Nanjing? Because China's IC design to go this step. TSMC in China now use 16nm, 12nm project on more than 20, it is natural to have a base to serve these customers, and provide Local service is the most efficient.Two most important TSMC, one is to cover enough customers, the second is to help and support potential Customer force. 'We want our customers to succeed, and we will do our best to help them succeed, which is why we can continue to develop in China cause.' He stressed.
Shu Qi said that China's new so many fabs is definitely a good thing for China. For Huali, a successful completion of 35,000 and even the first half of next year is full, the market does have this need.Although the wafer More factories, the OEM competition is more and more fierce, but this has created a better platform for domestic design companies, with more choices. Huali focus on advanced technology, but there is a choice For example, on the 28nm technology node, we focus on the development of PolySiON and HKMG versions, though not as many as the industry leader, but Vary will do a good job in these two versions, Continue to do so, 28nm, plans to develop 14nmFinFET, support all the domestic environment.
Some suggestions to China's semiconductor industry
He Ying: The most important question to be solved is how to be a game maker, and we need to participate more in the formulation of international standards and rules. At present, most of the standards and rules we use are set by foreigners, so only the participation or mastery of globalization Standard, in order to have a say in the world chip arena.
Shu Qi: 2018 is indeed a very good opportunity, both the market and opportunities exist, so all the chip companies, including our company, should do their own thing well, not only to invest in research and development, and to do well, the country You can give some policy support, especially start-ups.
Xu Yun: The trend of semiconductor development in China is now over. The most important driving force behind China's potential development is the huge market and the rapid growth of big data, which is the biggest difference from the United States and any other country in the world. We should invest more in AI or big data to really transform our data into resources that are useful to us. In this regard, we should increase our chances of investing more in Europe and the United States.
Dai Weimin: After the mass merger of the structural adjustment, it is worth attention paid bonuses, there must be a special investment company to start the fund.
Lin Jung-jian: People are a big constraint. This point needs to be solved. We should start from the bottom-up planning of the entire education system.
Luo ball: I think China has the support of government funds, a huge population, there are very energetic practitioners, the resources available to see.Finally, I hope everyone in the industry should have the entrepreneurial spirit, Do one thing should focus on, not impetuous, focus on the industry, what to do what to do, so as to be able to do well and be strong and true. Lee Chu: In addition to passion, have the patience to go on and see How can we cooperate with universities and hope that the industry will continue to support university research and development? Many cutting-edge technologies are still being developed from universities and hope more attention will be given to them.
Yang Xiaodong: the advantages of local enterprises are hard-working and innovative consciousness are stronger, the other is to insist that I think this industry can do today, first of all, a large number of people are hard to persist, do not forget the beginning to do one thing, which It is a great feature of local enterprises and hopes to keep it.
Ling Lin: people can change everything, the core factor or talent.Another industry is still in a period of change, if we can seize the opportunity, there will be great development.
To the army: the biggest advantage is the market, because we consume more than half of the world's IC, processing enterprises and so much in the short term, can replace the processing of China is still more difficult, we have such a big market, There is so much demand, which is unmatched in many places, this is the biggest opportunity for the development of our IC.