1. Daddy: How big is the real gap between China and US semiconductors?
ZTE has been banned from selling chips in the United States, and domestic media have been constantly voicing their calls to develop the semiconductor industry. How large is the gap between domestic semiconductors and Europe and the United States?
1, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. mass-produced 7nm this year, SMIC currently only 28nm, due to digging Liang Mengsong team, it is estimated that next year can mass production 14nm.
2. Liang Mengsong was formerly the head of R&D for 14nm development of TSMC, and the head of R&D for 14nm developed by Samsung. The Liang Mengsong team joined SMIC to greatly accelerate the development process of 14nm. It also illustrates the decisive role of talents in the IC industry.
3, It is a pity that both Intel and TSMC have stepped up prevention of digging people on the mainland in the past few years. It is difficult to dig people from the two companies. Not to mention the whole team digging people, individual talents are difficult, Intel A few years ago the Chinese were banned from working in the core technology field of wafer manufacturing.
4. China's integrated circuits are the closest to international standards for packaging and testing. No matter whether it is Changjiang Electronics, Nantong Fujitsu or Tianshui Huatian, at least there is no technical gap compared with Sun Moonlight. However, the winner-take-all theory exists in the field of packaging and testing. , Compared with the three competitors in the mainland, Sun Moonlight is far ahead of the scale and profitability, especially after the acquisition of silicon products.
5. For the packaging and testing industry, the biggest problem is how to retain talents. From the perspective of treatment, the gap between China's three major packaging and testing plants and leading international manufacturers is still obvious. The profitability of China's packaging and testing plants is more from low-cost operations. With the introduction of high-end talent, it is easier to be the object of being excavated.
6. The mainland includes Yangtze River storage, Hefei Changxin, Fujian Jinhua are all developing storage, even if the three companies can achieve mass production this year, technically still lagging behind Samsung, Hynix is more than five years, not to mention most of the mainland's top three are still in the test. During the production or R&D phase, even if one of them is mass-produced, how to increase the yield rate is also a problem.
7, IC design is the locomotive of China's integrated circuit industry. The simple calculation of revenues gives people the impression of prosperity. Hass and Zhan Rui have also entered the top ten global IC design revenues, but the general gross margin of IC design companies in the mainland are Below 30%, European and American competitors are all above 45%.
8. In addition to Hass, currently IC design companies in mainland China are generally small in size, lack of profitability, and investment in cutting-edge technologies is not enough. Among the funds, the biggest problem lies in the shortage of talented people, especially high-end talents. Although over the past three decades, China has studied abroad. There are many overseas personnel, but there are very few people who can truly enter the high-level IC companies in Europe and America. Even if they can enter the core level, they are also monitored by the U.S. government.
9. The biggest problem in the mainland IC design industry is that it is very difficult to develop to the mid-to-high end. Not only is it difficult to attract high-level talent due to lack of profitability, but the lack of overall technology also makes it difficult to recruit higher-level personnel. This is similar to the Chinese semiconductor industry. The difference between Chinese football is that Chinese football can be used to dig people through high salaries, and Chinese integrated circuits often face the dilemma of being unattainable, even with sufficient funds.
9. The reason why Hassian can rise is that Huawei is the main reason for endorsing books. With Huawei's endorsement, Hass can not only continue to invest in cutting-edge technologies, but also can be handy in the recruitment of global talents, especially high-end talents. These guarantee Hass's High starting point, continuous development.
10. Compared with wafer manufacturing, packaging and testing, and IC design, the gap between mainland China and overseas giants in semiconductor equipment, materials, and EDA tools is even more pronounced.
11. The recent big news is that Alibaba's acquisition of Zhongtian Micro is good news for China's IC industry. Compared to the mainland's weak IC industry, Chinese Internet companies have at least been financially world-class. The government should call for more. Multi-Internet companies invest in the IC industry. This is also the development trend of Internet companies. From a global perspective, including Google, Microsoft is investing in chip development.
2. ZTE was banned by the United States ban caused by the chip industry BAT and other giants early layout;
Under the influence of the United States' ZTE (31.310, 0.00, 0.00%) incident, the chip industry has attracted unprecedented public attention. Today (April 20th) In the morning, Alibaba Group announced that its wholly-owned acquisition is known as the only one in mainland China. Self-Embedded CPU IP Core Co., Ltd.—Zhongtian Microsystems Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Zhongtian Micro), but the purchase amount has not been disclosed yet.
In fact, not only Ali’s involvement in the chip industry, Baidu, Tencent, HKUST News (56.170, -1.63, -2.82%), Huawei, and other giants have long been deployed. Wang Yanhui, Secretary-General of the Mobile Alliance, accepts the “Daily Economic News” reporter During the interview, Ali said that this move is an important measure for the future layout, complementing the short chip of the Internet of Things. For the Chinese chip industry, the entry of giants can also help companies to conduct more forward-looking research.
Ali layout chip industry
"The acquisition of Zhongtianwei is an important part of Alibaba's chip layout. 'Alibaba's CTO Zhang Jianfeng said that IP Core is the core of basic chip capabilities, and entering the IP Core area is the basis for Chinese chips to achieve 'autonomy and control'.
In fact, as early as January 2016, Alibaba.com had already become a shareholder of Zhongtianwei and became its largest shareholder. In business, both parties have already conducted in-depth cooperation in the field of the Internet of Things.
At Yunqi Conference in 2017, Zhongtian Micro and Alibaba Cloud jointly released a strategic cooperation on promoting the construction of hardware and software infrastructure for the Internet of Things: Zhongtian Microelectronics will fully promote the IoT chip in the chip field through the Alibaba Cloud Link Market at the terminal. Scale application, in-depth optimization of AliOS Things, promote the deployment and application of AliOS in the IoT chip field, including computer vision chips, MCU platform chips integrating access security, and the world’s first NAS security chip based on AliOS. .
Just last month, Hu Xiaoming, senior vice president of Alibaba Group and president of Alibaba Cloud, announced at the Shenzhen Summit of Yunqi Conference in 2018 that the Internet of Things (IoT) is Alibaba Group's successor, finance, logistics, and cloud computing. The main track. The chip is the core device of the Internet of Things and is at the core of all applications in the Internet of Things. However, at present, the chip industry in China is weak, and the core chip mainly relies on imports. According to Wang Yanhui, Alibaba’s wholly-owned acquisition Zhongtian micro-intentions are also very obvious: For the future layout, do not want to be controlled by people in the development process of the Internet of things.
It is worth noting that Ali has previously invested in a number of chip companies such as the Cambrian, Barefoot Networks, Shen Jian, Kneron, and ASR.
At the same time, Alibaba has already laid out its own AI chip, and the 'self-developed AI chip' has become a strategic part of Ali's 'China Core'. Just yesterday, Alibaba revealed that Dharma is developing a nerve. Network chip - Ali-NPU, this chip will be used in imagery video analysis, machine learning and other AI inference calculations, mainly to solve AI inference problems in image scenes, video recognition, cloud computing and other commercial scenarios, improve computing efficiency, reduce costs .
Giant entry into the industry is expected to activate the chip industry
Recently, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that it will prohibit companies in the country from selling any electronic technology or telecommunications components to Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer ZTE for the next seven years.
Today, at a press conference held at the headquarters in Shenzhen, Yin Yimin, chairman of ZTE Corporation, said that the US ban may cause ZTE to enter a state of shock. This incident caused the industry to oscillate, and the Chinese telecommunications industry’s “core-less” concept again seriously. Before people.
The ICInsights report shows that the global semiconductor market reached US$438.5 billion. The top ten semiconductor manufacturers accounted for 58.5% of the entire market. These manufacturers are Samsung, Intel, SK Hynix, Micron, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Toshiba. Nvidia and NXP, the names of Chinese chip makers did not appear, which also led to China's chip industry is extremely dependent on imports. Open data show that in 2016 China's chip imports amounted to 230 billion US dollars, the cost is almost second place Twice the amount of imported crude oil.
On the other hand, China's relevant departments and enterprises are investing heavily in the field of chips. In 2014, the national team entered the market, and the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund was established. In February 2016, China National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Company, Huaxin Investment, Ziguang Group signed a tripartite strategic cooperation agreement in Beijing, stating that in the next five years, the fund intends to grant the total amount of Ziguang Group no more than 10 billion yuan in support of equity investment.
Domestic technology giants such as Baidu, Tencent, HKUST, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc. have also entered the cloud chip field in the form of investment or self-research, respectively. For example, Huawei Hass, Baidu’s XPU, etc. Evergrande also announced its involvement in the integrated circuit industry.
However, the domestic chip industry started late, and the chip industry is an industry that relies on ecology. Niu Yuyu, the founder of Jinyun Technology, said in an interview with the reporter of “Daily Economic News” that in the era of mobile computers, the Wintel Alliance has grasped the land (Intel The chip), with one hand (Mac OS), dominated the entire ecosystem. In this case, chip technologies that are not compatible with their ecology are difficult to grow.
Niu Yuyu said that in order to develop the Chinese chip industry, on the one hand, artificial intelligence applications based on new chips should be brought to the ground to generate real commercial value and allow users to accept and pay for it; on the other hand, a complete application development platform should be constructed to allow experts. And the average developer can quickly develop artificial intelligence applications and make the ecology bigger, so that the chip industry can really grow. Daily Economic News
3.Hunan Guoke invests 10 billion to build Changzhou integrated circuit eco-industrial park
On the morning of April 20, the Changzhou Integrated Circuit Eco-industrial Park project was officially signed and settled in the Wujin National High-tech Zone. It plans to gather world-class algorithms, chip, firmware, software, testing, and process R&D teams. Wang Quan, secretary of the Municipal Party Committee, attended and spoke at the meeting.
It is understood that the project will have a total investment of 10 billion yuan and a total planning area of 500 mu. Hunan Guoke Holdings Co., Ltd. will establish a series of chip R&D companies in Wujin National Hi-tech Zone, mainly engaged in driver chips, trusted computing, national security, multimedia Chips, communications, artificial intelligence and other chip design business. At the same time, under the support of the National Grand Fund for the integrated circuit industry in Changzhou, Guoke Holdings will introduce its investment, shareholding chip companies or ecological companies, and lead the establishment of the Joint Trusted Computing Laboratory. And academician workstations, joint related units to establish digital copyright protection (DRM) R & D, testing center, build 4K content management and operation service industry base.
In his speech, Wang Quan stated that integrated circuits are the core of a new generation of information technology industry and are a strategic, fundamental, leading industry that promotes economic and social development and safeguards national security in the new era. Currently, Changzhou is promoting smart cities, intelligent manufacturing. Industrial development, and integrated circuits are the brains of smart cities and smart manufacturing. China has a large gap between the integrated circuit industry and developed countries such as Europe and the United States. It must speed up the domestic independent innovation in the field of integrated circuits and the development of independent industries.
Wang Quan said that as an integrated circuit design enterprise with a national information technology industry layout, Guoke has undertaken many national key scientific research projects and filled a lot of research and development gaps. This time, the company is planning to integrate integrated circuit eco-industrial parks in Wujin, which is to accelerate the integrated circuit eco-industry. The major development measures contribute to the national development strategy. For Changzhou and Wujin, it can make up for the shortcomings in the field of integrated circuits, and it will help local areas to expand the integrated industrial chain of integrated circuits and form a new development in Changwu District. The commanding heights will be fully supported by the municipal and district levels, ensuring that the project will be completed and put into production as soon as possible, and will work together to create a leading domestic, internationally-influential and innovative park, and contribute more to the development of the national integrated circuit industry and accelerate the building of a manufacturing powerhouse. Changzhou builds a national first-class intelligent manufacturing city and adds strong momentum.
Hunan Xiangke Microelectronics Co., Ltd. Chairman Xiang Ping stated that it will start planning at a high starting point, build high standards, and operate a high-level operation of the Changzhou Integrated Circuit Eco-industrial Park project, focusing on the development of memory chips, driver chips, trusted computing, national security, multimedia Chips, Internet of Things, communications, artificial intelligence and other chip design business, boosting Changzhou to better create a smart manufacturing city.
Deputy Mayor Shi Jinjun, Secretary of the Wujin District Committee attended the event. Changzhou Daily