Skyworth Group Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Wang Zhiguo told CBC reporter on April 24th that the color TV chips must be fully domesticated with a bottleneck in fine manufacturing and patents. He optimistically expects that color TV chips will be able to be domestically produced within three years.
China is the world's largest color TV manufacturing base, but 'Less Core Screening' has been plaguing China's color TV industry in the past. With the strong rise of domestic LCD TV panel industry, color TV chips will be the next 'fortress' that Chinese companies are waiting to overcome.
Color TV China core multi-strength
In early 2018, at the CES in the United States, Skyworth displayed its own research and development AI (artificial intelligence) quality chip. As early as in 2014, Skyworth, a subsidiary of Skyworth's handheld Huawei, shared the national nuclear high-level major projects and developed together. The first intelligent TV chip V800 with China's independent intellectual property rights fills the blank of China's TV system chip.
Wang Zhiguo disclosed to the First Financial Reporter that Skyworth was the first to apply the V800 to Internet TV. There are millions of such TVs.
The First Financial reporter noted on April 24th at Skyworth’s 30th anniversary that Hass acquired strategies with chip companies such as MStar (Star), Realtek, SK Hynix, Toshiba, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. Cooperation award.
This year's independently developed AI quality chip exhibited by Skyworth is in cooperation with the Taiwanese chip company Novatek. 'We define the chip, design it with them, and look for the production in Taiwan.' Wang Zhiguo said, Skyworth's research and development AI quality chip It is hoped that through the artificial intelligence technology, the old movie and TV content can also achieve the improvement of the picture quality, thereby realizing the differentiation of the color TV.
This AI quality chip will be integrated into the main chip of the TV and used in Skyworth's own TV products. Wang Zhiguo expects this year's TV application opportunities will reach millions.
Interestingly, Skyworth’s headquarter building in Shenzhen is known as Skyworth Semiconductor Design Tower. Wang Zhiguo revealed that Skyworth will continue to increase chip R&D efforts. Skyworth Digital has acquired a chip company. In addition, Skyworth also cooperates with external partners. Develop chips. He even imagined that future domestic companies can jointly invest in color TV chip factories and design custom chips.
Not only Skyworth, Hisense, TCL, Konka and other mainstream Chinese color TV companies also have access to the chip field.
In June 2005, Hisense has developed China's first digital video processing chip with independent intellectual property rights and industrialization - Xinxin, breaking the monopoly of foreign companies in digital video processing chips. Hisense also developed in 2013. China's first network multimedia TV SOC master chip, and achieve mass production. In 2015, Hisense released Hi-View Pro picture quality engine chip, becoming China's color TV company with independent high-end picture quality chips.
TCL Group Chairman and CEO Li Dongsheng revealed last year that TCL has been a shareholder of two chip companies since 2013, namely, DT.3545 and Amlogic. It is understood that DT Electronics, The morning was established by senior Chinese experts in the Silicon Valley chip industry in the United States. Duntech Electronics was incorporated in the United States in 2005 and moved back to Asia in 2006. R&D and engineering service centers were established in Shenzhen and Taiwan, dedicated to man-machine interface solutions. R & D. Crystal morning was founded in 1995, headquartered in Shanghai, the main smart TV and set-top box smart chip design.
Konka also independently developed the 8K chip, which can control the gray level of each pixel of the screen and realize the full 8K signal processing.
Taiwanese companies still dominate the market
At present, Chinese Taiwanese companies still dominate the global color TV chip market.
Zhang Bing, Research Director of China Research Institute IHS, told the First Financial Reporter that in the main TV chip field, MStar (Chengxing Semiconductor) is the absolute leader, accounting for more than 40% of the global market share; the top three suppliers are Mstar, Media tek (also known as MTK or 'MediaTek') and Novatek (Union Technology), their market share is roughly 40%, 16% and 15%, and these three are Chinese Taiwanese companies.
Mainland China's chip companies are also rising. Zhang Bing said that Hass currently holds more than 5% of the global color TV chip market share, and Amlogic (crystal Chen), RDA (RDA, has been acquired by Violet) and other chip makers share Both are relatively small. Despite the small share, chip companies in China are in a rising period.
A former MStar employee told CBN that the global color TV chip market is currently dominated by two Chinese Taiwanese companies, MStar and MTK. MTK has acquired MStar in 2010, and the two companies together hold the global color TV chip market share. About 60%. Taiwan's another company Realtek (REALTEK) is also an important supplier of color TV chips.
This person said that in the supplier of domestic color TV chips, Hass had a small-scale supply; another supplier Amlogic, a Chinese-led US-owned company, is currently seeking domestic listing, and has been to the millet OTT box. Supply of chips. These two companies are the main force outside the Taiwanese company.
The First Financial reporter learned from Skyworth, Hisense, and TCL that Mstar is currently the largest supplier of color TV chips. Another industry source told the First Financial reporter that Hass has also cooperated with several major domestic color power plants. Group CTO Wang Zhiguo admitted that different color TV chip vendors have their own strengths. For example, MStar is good at intelligent voice chips, Novatek is good at picture quality engines, Hass has domestically owned independent intellectual property rights.
At present, color TV chips account for about 5% of the total cost of the TV sets. Zhang Bing said that the color TV chips involved more than 10 kinds of chips, including power management, audio processing and other functions. Skyworth, Hisense's AI painting Quality chip and picture quality engine chip, mainly picture quality enhancement chip, similar to Sony's X1 Extreme, enhanced color TV image control and processing to achieve better picture quality.
Because of the fierce competition in the color TV industry and the high cost requirements, the color TV chip has a high degree of integration, covering the central processor, image processors, etc. The WIFI module, AI module, and the future also have the opportunity to integrate into color TV chips. The staff of (MStar) said that the cost of the main color TV chip is less than US$10, the cost of the main board, including the main chip, is about RMB 100-200, and the cost of the 55-inch LCD TV is about RMB 2,000, which is not high. .
However, the 'fortress' that captured the color TV chips are still of great significance. Because China is the world's largest color TV production base, more than 60% of TV production worldwide comes from China. Data from AVC shows that in 2017, TVs and semi-finished TVs exported to mainland China reach 102 million units. If you add about 50 million units to domestic sales, China will produce nearly 150 million color TVs a year. China has such a huge color TV capacity. How can we make television? The machine's 'heart' is subject to people?
Refined manufacturing needs to be broken
So, where is the localization of color TV chips difficult?
The former MStar employees believe that China’s color TVs had previously “lost the core and display less screens”, and the localization of screens has been gradually resolved, while the chips are still mainly imported, mainly due to difficulties in chip development and production processes. Hass, Amlogic The chip design capabilities have basically met the demand for color TV products. In the early years, their chip design capabilities have reached the level of 14 nanometers. Of course, the better the chip factory technology, the higher the integration level and the lower the cost.
In terms of production, SMIC can currently produce 28-nanometer chips, while Taiwanese companies can already produce 10-nanometer chips. Therefore, HiSilicon and Amlogic designed the chips to find TSMC to produce them. Otherwise, they would not be competitive.
In fact, more than three years ago, the V800 chip jointly developed by Skyworth and Hass was produced by SMIC. This year, the AI quality chip introduced by Skyworth is to find Taiwanese companies to produce.
Wang Zhiguo believes that the key to localization of color TV chips is wafers. If we look at the design customization, localization of color TV chips has already been realized. Like Amlogic, Spreadtrum and others can all design chips, but they still have to look for someone to produce. So, the future Improve the fine manufacturing capabilities, in order to truly realize the localization of color TV chips.
However, Wang Zhiguo believes that as long as he has great determination, the country attaches great importance to, and the support of resources and participation of large companies, it is possible to break the bottleneck of refined manufacturing. He is optimistic that within three years, localization of color TV chips can be realized, and of course, patent issues will also arise. .
Zhang Bing said calmly that there are many types of color TV chips, many of which involve infrastructure, patents, etc. Localization cannot be broken short-term. However, 'China has a strong local brand and manufacturing base, and the development of the chip industry requires an economic scale. , This is the market advantage of local suppliers such as Hass and RDA. “The color TV SoC chip is mainly adopting 28nm process. In the next 1-2 years, high-end products will go to 22nm, and the chip demand will continue to iterate. 8K chip.
In the future, Chinese brands will use domestic color TV chips more and more; Chinese Taiwanese companies will gradually set up joint ventures in mainland China to expand their share in the Chinese market; Japanese and Korean chip companies will decline, but they will still be strong in memory. ; Qualcomm and other US companies still occupy the high-end market, because they master ARM chips.' Wang Zhiguo predicts.
Another industry insider also optimistically stated that SMIC can produce 28nm chips and will continue to make progress in the future. Localization of color TV chips in the future will not be a problem. The entire chip industry chain is shifting to mainland China, such as TSMC already in Nanjing. Set up factories, it is expected to take a film this year and mass production next year.