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1. Exclusive: Crazy bitcoin! Bits Continental December 10nm orders have been over Hass thinking;
Set micro-network news, bitcoin swirling plummeted stir the world bitcoin crazy, blockchain fiery, but also led the wave of a wave of venture capital circle.Bit was founded in 2013 in the field of IC design is undoubtedly From this wave of fury blaze a dark horse, now 80% or 90% of the world's mining machine are provided by the company, an early miners said the 2017 bit continental monthly profit of up to 30 million US dollars in the first half of 2017 Has realized a net profit of more than 1 billion yuan.The company with its own design ASIC mining bitcoin chips, in one fell swoop into the ranks of the top five Chinese IC design companies in 2017. If calculated profitability, the bit continent is topped the list, far Far from the other manufacturers left behind.
Bitcoin soared 1,900% in the past 12 months, and related industries have become the beneficiaries as the cryptocurrency gains add to the need for massive computing power.
The bit of the continent is a vertical integration miracle, it designed the chips of bitcoin mining machines, assembled to the machine, and then sold to customers around the world; bit continent also manipulated the machine to manage their own accounts, run a wide range of bitcoin sales platform, and finally Unified management.Data show that bit mainland China successfully developed and mass production of a variety of custom ASIC chips and the whole system, with advanced technology 28nm, 16nm, 12nm integrated circuit design custom full production experience, the most representative of which is Its use in the encrypted digital currency miner BM chip series.Every year the bit mainland mainland miner sales of more than hundreds of thousands of units, each miner to use hundreds of ASIC chips, such as one ant miner S9 will Use 189 ASIC chips.
The fifth generation of chip BM1387, the world's lowest power, highest performance computing accelerator chip, mass production scale of billions of dollars, using TSMC 16nm process, the bit continent has become the top five TSMC customers, the largest 16nm high-end products One of the users.Goldman is expected in the second half of 2017, bitmap mainland TSMC's wafer procurement scale is three times the relevant procurement of artificial intelligence applications.Weiji supply chain from the micro-network shows that in December 10MC TSMC orders from the bit continent Has surpassed the Hass.It is presumed that the chip mainland using this technology, should be its November release of the world's first SOPHON tensor accelerometer chip - BM1680.
With the development of artificial intelligence algorithm and application technology, as well as the gradual maturity of the ASIC ASIC industry environment, artificial intelligence ASIC chip will become more and more important in the field of computing.SOPHON TPU chip BM1680 is also the first Continental to enter artificial intelligence Dedicated custom chips for depth learning applications Tensor calculation acceleration processing, suitable for CNN, RNN, DNN and other deep neural network inference prediction and training.Bit Mainland plans to launch in 2018 higher performance and power consumption than the third generation Products, and is expected in 2019 launched the fourth generation SOPHON BM series.
In addition to the bit mainland China, another Chinese Bitcoin mining chip design company Jia Nan Yun Zhi is also a TSMC customer bitcoin manufacturing TSMC is undoubtedly the biggest winner.According to DIGITIMES reported that the recent world-renowned mining machine customers continue to visit TSMC and related design services The company is proposing new ideas and product volume schedules for HPC and AI chip solutions and is committed to achieving the goal of mass-producing the latest, strongest and fastest chip solutions by 2018 at any cost Let TSMC executives look for it, and even take the initiative to meet with some important customers, thanks to them soon to become TSMC 2018 latest 7nm craft carry the main son.
DIGITIMES said that the mining machine customers from the very beginning are TSMC's most advanced process loyal fans, and they are very good customer base, because they only care about the performance of the chip finally able to show, rather than the chip cost. Higher chip design services and foundry prices often set the bar on the higher market: 'It's an arms race,' comments Mark Li, a semiconductor analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in Hong Kong. "Bitcoin uses very dense technology and you need a very fast chip to dig Bitcoin in your system."
TSMC said in a third-quarter conference call that the cryptocurrency ASIC market generated $ 3.5 billion-$ 400 million in the quarter, compared to $ 400 million in 2017. As TSMC makes a 'basin This emerging market has also drawn the attention of other wafer makers in the near future, with Samsung and Baikal, a Bitcoin mining hardware provider recently signed, to build Baikal's ASIC chip for mining operations, scheduled 2018 In January of 14nm production process.
Mining boom not only benefited the foundry industry, outsourced packaging and testing (OSAT) industry also dip, DIGITIMES pointed out that JECT STATS ChipPAC Korea package bit mainland ASIC chip, the daily packaging volume up to 1 million group, according to the company, consider Expanding production capacity to meet the huge demand.Other packaging and testing plant Amkor, ASE, silicon products are also full of orders.Registered by Nomura Holdings analyst Tadao Tadao wrote in a report, Japan's semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker Ulvac Inc. and love Companies such as Devon Test may also benefit from bitcoin upside.
In design services, bitcoin mining companies such as BitTorns manufacture and design their own ASIC chips and outsource some of the processes to companies such as Taiwan's Creativity and WorldCom, both of which surged 180% this year.
On the other hand, in addition to having a positive impact on TSMC and other related suppliers, ASICs are also replacing other types of cryptocurrencies, such as GPUs and FPGAs, and Goldman believes that the growth in the bit-continent may affect both NVIDIA and Xilinx is getting more and more detrimental, the two companies are the world's leading GPU and FPGA maker.Analysts Toshiya Hari said that although the rise of the bit mainland and its ASIC solutions to NVIDIA and AMD have long-term risks, but the latter two Companies are all benefiting from the substantial growth in Ethereum this year and the market believes that the contribution of the cryptocurrency-only semiconductor business to revenue is very small and thus unlikely to seriously affect the share price.He predicts that the overall potential market for cryptocurrency ASIC in 2017 will be about 2 billion - 2.5 billion U.S. dollars, and should fluctuate with the trend of major cryptocurrencies (bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum), well above the $ 1 billion Nvidia AI accelerator market.
In addition to the bit mainland China, Jia Nan Yun Zhi is another cryptocurrency ASIC enterprise in China, but from the scale of the wafer procurement is far smaller than the bit continent.
2. Semiconductor volume Qi go up upstream silicon into capacity expansion cycle;
Soochow Securities
The latest core point of view
Semiconductor equipment: Industry volume and price Qi booming boom, the upstream silicon into the capacity expansion cycle Silicon wafer supply falls short of demand prices into the cycle, the industry into the volume and price rise of the high degree of prosperity .2012-2016 silicon wafer The price is very stable, but by 2017 Q1 price increases 10%, Q2 silicon wafer prices continue to rise, the cumulative increase has more than 20% since the third quarter of July contract price rose another 10% or so round this round of silicon Wafer silicon wafer supply tension caused by the main drivers of price increases are the following: 1, the downstream memory industry companies are investing in 3DNAND expansion; 2, artificial intelligence, automotive electronics, Internet of things, smart phones and other emerging industries The expansion of applications brought about by the expansion; 3, the global expansion of the wafer fab so that demand growth.
Wafer is processed from silicon wafer, downstream silicon wafer in short supply, but also bring the wafer industry capacity gap.Worldwide 92% of the silicon production capacity concentrated in the hands of five companies (Japan Shin-Etsu, Japan SUMCO, etc.) And no Chinese companies in August Japan SUMCO invested 400 million US dollars to build a monthly production capacity of 100,000 12-inch semiconductor wafers, put into operation in 2019. TSMC, UMC and other foundry leaders and Japan's leading silicon maker signed the future 1-2 years of supply contract.Generally silicon plant construction to production time is 2-3 years, so we expect the next few years out of stock of silicon will be normal.
At present, there are at least nine silicon wafer projects in China, with a total investment of over 50 billion RMB yuan, including Shanghai Xinsheng, Chongqing Super Silicon, Chengdu Super Silicon, Ningxia Yinhe, Zhejiang Jinruihong, Zhengzhou Synchronous Phase I and II, Wuxi Yixing Central Jingsheng Project and BOE Xi'an High-tech Zone Project, etc. At present, the total domestic demand is about 450,000 pieces per month, It is estimated that the monthly demand of 12-inch silicon wafers in China will be 80-100 million in 2020. At present, the monthly production capacity of 12-inch silicon wafers in China has reached 1.2 million, which can alleviate the shortage of silicon wafers to a certain extent.
SEMI forecasts that semiconductor equipment sales in 2017 will reach a record 559 billion U.S. dollars, with equipment sales growth rate highest at 49.3% reaching 11.3 billion U.S. dollars by 2018. On December 13, the International Semiconductor Manufacturers Association (SEMI) announced its year-end Forecast - Worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales will grow by 35.6% to $ 55.9 billion by 2017. This marks the first time the semiconductor equipment market has surpassed the market peak of $ 47.7 billion in 2000. It is estimated that sales of the global semiconductor equipment market in 2018 Will increase by 7.5%, once again breaking the historical record to reach 60.1 billion US dollars SEMI year-end projections indicate that in 2017 the wafer processing equipment will increase by 37.5% to 45 billion US dollars The front-end parts, including FAB facilities and equipment, wafer manufacturing and masking Equipment, is expected to increase 45.8% to 2.6 billion US dollars.Packaging equipment part will grow 25.8% to 3.8 billion US dollars, while the semiconductor test equipment is expected to grow 22% this year to reach 4.5 billion US dollars.
Investment advice: optimistic about the localization of silicon manufacturing equipment, devaluation 'Jing Sheng Electrical' We are optimistic about wafer manufacturing equipment localization, but also optimistic about the silicon manufacturing equipment localization; the same time that the core material of silicon segments Of the investment will be bound to promote the demand for key equipment such as single crystal furnace, focusing on the 'Crystal Sheng Electrical': the domestic scarcity of large-size single crystal furnace equipment manufacturers, is expected to achieve import substitution; the remaining concern: the leader in domestic semiconductor equipment 'North China invasive ', Large equity joint-stock test machine and automatic sorting machine company' Chang Chuan Technology ', high purity process system suppliers' pure technology'.
risk warning:
The order landed lower than expected, the import substitution process was less than the expected financial website
3. Big coffee 'sword' third-generation semiconductor industry
China - Central and Eastern European Trade Facilitation State Inspection Zone Unveiled
Yesterday, 2017 China (Ningbo) Third Generation Semiconductor Industry Summit and Innovation Project Promotion was held in Ningbo. Many industry experts in the field of semiconductor, industry, investment and financing institutions, etc., discussed the future trend of the third generation semiconductor industry in Ningbo. , About 200 representatives from related industries attended the forum for sharing.
Industry experts gathered in Ningbo
In recent years, the third generation of semiconductor materials represented by silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) have the advantages of large forbidden band width, strong radiation resistance, good high temperature stability, high photoelectric conversion ability, Excellent power characteristics and low energy loss superior performance, solid state light source and power electronics, microwave radio frequency devices 'core.'
Yesterday at the forum, the third generation of semiconductor technology innovation strategic alliance Secretary-General Yu Kunshan, Chinese Academy of Sciences Ningbo Materials researcher Yeji Chun, State Grid Institute of the United Nations Research Institute deputy director Dai Zhaobo, Institute of Electrical Engineering researcher Ning Puqi, Guotaibu protection Coordination Division Wang Yong and other experts, respectively, from the third generation of semiconductor technology development status and application, the development of the third generation of Ningbo, the overall layout of the semiconductor industry, third-generation semiconductor technology roadmap, the application of semiconductor materials in electric vehicles and third-generation semiconductor knowledge Property disputes and coping strategies topics such as lectures, from the technical changes, the status quo, market applications and intellectual property protection and other aspects of Ningbo layout for the third generation of semiconductor industry to provide guidance and reference.
Meeting with the third generation of semiconductor industry in Ningbo development needs, inviting Beijing Zhibo Sheng Yuan Technology Co., Ltd., Semiconductor Manufacturing (IC) (IC) (IC) Co., Ltd. and other six units were pioneering projects for roadshow promotion, in order to speed up the gathering of semiconductor industry innovation resources, The formation of industrial agglomeration advantages create a good atmosphere.
Ningbo has the third generation semiconductor industry foundation
The semiconductor industry in Ningbo started in 2000 and lasted for 17 years. It has formed a complete upstream and downstream industry chain and possesses multiple terminal application markets. The industrial foundation is solid and the development needs are stable. The fundamental advantages of developing the third generation semiconductor industry are highlighted.
'Accelerating the development of the third generation of semiconductors will help Ningbo form a competitive edge in the industry and speed up synergy and cooperation between the upstream and downstream sectors of the industry to seize a place for the new green and smart economy.' But the 'cake' is very large and often 'missed opportunities' are missed. "Industry experts warn.
We also clearly understand the shortcomings of the semiconductor industry in Ningbo, such as weak industrial innovation support, lack of professionals, lack of collaborative innovation in research and development of public R & D platform; such as uneven industrial structure, the lack of third-generation semiconductor design enterprises gathered And the development of the foundry line. '' Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering Dr Yeji Chun analysis of the future market for the industry ready, the urgent need to leveraging technological innovation base advantage to technological innovation to promote industrial upgrading in the key Make breakthroughs in the area and achieve overtaking.
The development of the third generation semiconductor industry requires overall planning.Ningbo has more downstream enterprises and markets in many terminal applications and is the driving force for the development of the third generation semiconductor industry. "Ye Ji-chun pointed out.
In addition, it was learned that Ningbo will launch the major project of 'Technology Innovation 2025' in 2018 and is expected to include the direction of the third generation semiconductor. The special focus will focus on the growth of third-generation semiconductor materials, device design, manufacture and application of technical capabilities, and strive to capture a batch of industries Development of key technologies, application of technical problems, will help promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries in the region, is conducive to seize the commanding heights of emerging industries.Ningbo Electronic Industry Association, the Secretary-General said that Ningbo Electronics Industry Association will also continue to play the advantages and role of the industry platform to boost Industrial Development. Modern Jinbao reporter Zheng Xiaowen / Photo Modern Daily