1. Shenzhen will build a world-class chip design and manufacturing platform
Guangzhou Daily Shenzhen News (all media reporter Yu Yuan) The reporter learned yesterday that IMEC of Europe Microelectronics Center has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Hard Egg Technology. It will establish IMEC Egg Egg Microelectronics Innovation Center in Shenzhen. Meanwhile, Deep European Microelectronics Research The hospital plans to land in Shenzhen, or will become the leading chip design and manufacturing delivery platform in Shenzhen and even the whole country.
It is understood that the European Microelectronics Center IMEC was founded in 1984. It is one of the largest independent microelectronics research centers in the world. It is also the global leader in chip design and nanotechnology. It has a large number of core patents and chip intellectual property rights. 'Europe's Bell Labs'. As a well-known AIoT eco-platform in China, Egg Egg Technology has more than 20,000 intelligent hardware innovation and startup companies.
'Because of the slower pace of new product replacements by foreign chip makers, this provides a historic opportunity for the rapid growth of more than 1,000 mid- and small-chip design and manufacturing companies in China. ' The relevant person in charge of hard egg technology said that there will be More Chinese industries have grown into globally leading industries, which have brought breakthrough opportunities for the development of local chip industries.
The responsible person revealed that, in response to the country's call for the development of the microelectronics industry, IMEC Egg Egg Microelectronics Innovation Center will use IMEC's tens of thousands of chip intellectual property rights and a complete chip manufacturing supply chain to create a world-class chip in Shenzhen. Design and manufacturing platform, the chip's high-end design resources, process design and other design capabilities into the domestic chip design and chip innovation industry.
In addition, IMEC Hard Egg Microelectronics Innovation Center plans to serve 1,000 chip companies in China within five years, establish joint training grounds and product design centers with many universities in China, train 500 to 1,000 high-end chip designers, and drive 50,000 to 100,000 trainings. Designers around the chip establish a full industry platform from chip design, manufacturing, and application to boost the 'China Core' industry to take off. Guangzhou Daily
2. Cultivate an integrated circuit of hundreds of billions of industries and let more mobile computers with 'Chongqing core'
Chongqing is embarking on the development of an IC industry with a scale of 100 billion yuan.
Core tips
In recent days, ZTE has been pushed to the forefront of the turmoil and has caused concern. This is the shortcoming of the domestic integrated circuit chip technology.
The chip, regarded as the national 'industrial food', is the 'heart' of all machine equipment. However, due to technical reasons, at present, in the field of high-end chip manufacturing, China has to rely heavily on imports.
In Chongqing, through continuous technological innovation, talent concentration and environmental optimization, the city’s integrated circuit industry has introduced and cultivated projects such as SK Hynix, China Resources Microelectronics, and Otis, gradually including chip design, wafer manufacturing, packaging and testing, and applications. The entire chip industry chain, which is under development, is embarking on the development of a 'Chongqing core' with a scale of 100 billion yuan.
In the process of narrowing the gap with world-class standards, the Chongqing chip manufacturing industry is making unremitting efforts and is struggling forward.
The domestic integrated circuit first started
The integrated circuit is a kind of miniature electronic device. It integrates transistors, resistors, and other components and wiring required in a circuit on a semiconductor silicon wafer or other dielectric substrate, and forms a circuit with a desired circuit function. The overall micro-architecture, that is, the integrated circuit chip, is then packaged in a single package to achieve productization.
In the production workshop of China Resources Microelectronics Chongqing company, tens of millions of integrated circuit modules are produced every day. Worker Zhu Leiyu's job is to etch single wafers and monitor whether the machine is operating normally. Every hour, he wants to A single wafer is placed on a machine for etching.
'After etching, nearly 30 million circuits will converge on each single wafer and eventually be divided into tens of thousands of module chips. These chips will eventually be installed on computers, mobile phones and other electronic devices one by one.' Zhu Leiyu said .
'Compared to other electronic components in computers and mobile phones, the chip profit is much higher.' Li Hong, general manager of China Resources Microelectronics Chongqing, introduced that China Resources Microelectronics has formed a monthly production of 47,000 pieces, with a process capacity of 0.18 micron. Semiconductor wafer manufacturing plant, and an 8-inch chip special process production line.
In fact, integrated circuits, an industry that is unique in European and American countries, is the first place in China to achieve a breakthrough. It is Chongqing.
In the 1950s, China's first integrated circuit chip was born in Chongqing Yongchuan Electronics. It can be said that the sprout of the domestic integrated circuit industry started from Chongqing.
However, the IC industry in Chongqing, which started earlier, failed to timely develop itself for various reasons. Until 2004, the world-famous Taiwan ProMOS Technologies planned to invest in the construction of integrated circuit chip production bases in the mainland.
At that time, Chongqing, where the automobile and motorcycle industry was the sole industry leader in the auto industry, was exploring breakthroughs in the transformation of its industrial structure and locked its target in the information industry. It plans to introduce several large-scale electronics companies to form a new industry. support.
The two sides soon hit it off.
In 2006, ProMOS invested in the establishment of Quande Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary, and successively shipped a batch of advanced integrated circuit production equipment to Chongqing. These equipment quickly brought its 8-inch chip production line to 10,000-month capacity. This is also Chongqing integrated circuit industry the most complete production line.
Restructuring hits three 'firsts'
Although bearing the expectation of all parties, the ProMOS project has some 'untimely'.
In the IC industry, there is a 'silicon cycle' phenomenon: 5 years is a cycle, and the market price of IC products in the cycle will fluctuate and fluctuate.
At the time of setting up the plant, ProMOS was in the midst of a trough, coupled with the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, which exacerbated the downturn in the IC industry. Due to the lack of financial support from the parent company, Suidetech could not expand its production capacity and it was difficult to operate.
How to get the reborn IC industry out of the predicament? Chongqing began to look for new opportunities.
At that time, the world’s top 500 AVIC Group planned to broaden the development field and hoped to integrate aviation high-tech into emerging industries such as new displays and avionics to enlarge its core advantages.
The Chongqing government’s proposal for CNAC to participate in the reorganization of Jude caused the latter’s great interest. After several rounds of negotiation and communication, in May 2011, CNAC purchased Jude Technology at the 8-inch chip factory in Xiyong Weidian Park and continued to implement it. Industrial production.
In recent years, with the approval of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, CNAC transferred the equity of AVIC Chongqing Microelectronics Co., Ltd. to China Resources Microelectronics Holdings Limited. In December of that year, CR Microelectronics Chongqing Co., Ltd. was unveiled.
This restructuring has created three 'firsts' in the history of the development of the domestic semiconductor industry: the first reorganization of the microelectronics business between the central enterprises; the first integration of the 8-inch wafer production line for the key strategic resources of the domestic semiconductor industry; the scale of domestic discrete device products and services. The largest integration.
In addition, China Resources Microelectronics has not only expanded its original wafer manufacturing line, but also brought a complete industrial chain from raw material manufacturing, IC design to packaging and testing, and promoted the upgrading of Chongqing chip manufacturing.
At the same time, a breakthrough has also been made in the testing and packaging of integrated circuits in Chongqing. South Korea's SK Hynix plans to build a storage chip packaging project with an annual output of 900 million crystal grains in Handan, and promote the development of a new IC research and development institute and a 12-inch chip project. Will build a complete set of integrated circuit industry chain in the "Design + Process + Package + Test + Application + Market Operation" in Xiyong Micro-electricity Park.
In Liangjiang New District, Chongqing Wankang Semiconductor 12-inch power semiconductor chip manufacturing and packaging test base, Otis Technology Chongqing integrated circuit package carrier base and other projects have settled in, has also become the Chongqing IC industry's help.
Not only chip manufacturing, packaging and testing, but also upstream design in the chip industry, Chongqing also has actions.
The IC Industrial Park in Chongqing High-tech Zone, established at the end of 2016, is positioned to build an integrated circuit industry chain with chip design as its core. It plans to promote upstream and downstream enterprises to form raw materials, monocrystalline silicon chips, chip designs, and chip manufacturing, etc. Full-process integrated circuit industry system. As of the end of last year, the park has entered 8 enterprise projects and plans to introduce 40 high-end IC companies in the next 5 years.
Violet light to 'make the city'
The largest investment in the IC industry in Chongqing came from the beginning of this year.
In February of this year, the Municipal Economic and Information Technology Commission, the Administrative Committee of the Liangjiang New Area and the Ziguang Group signed a strategic cooperation agreement. Ziguang Group will invest in the construction of the Ziguang Core Cloud Industrial City project. The total investment is expected to exceed RMB 60 billion, which is also directly under the jurisdiction of Chongqing Municipality. The largest investment in industrial projects.
After just over a month, at the end of March, the above three parties formally signed a contract. Chongqing and Ziguang Group entered into the implementation phase of strategic cooperation.
According to the City Economic and Information Commission, the establishment of Ziguang in Chongqing will promote the formation of a vertically integrated complete industrial chain and value chain in Chongqing's electronic information industry, and support the electronic information industry to achieve 'quality change, efficiency change, and power change'.
The $1 output value of the chip industry can drive the $10 output value of the electronic information industry and the GDP of $100. 'The person in charge of the City's Economic and Credit Commission believes that the Ziguang Project will attract upstream and downstream IC companies and lay the foundation for Parts and key basic materials and other projects, thus forming hundreds of billions of strategic industrial clusters, to promote Chongqing to accelerate the construction of a modern industrial system.
Why did Ziguang choose to spend heavily to develop IC industry in Chongqing?
Zhao Weiguo, chairman of Ziguang Group, stated that this is in line with the development of Chongqing's electronics manufacturing industry, and the big data intelligence industry has a bright future. It has formed a good industrial ecosystem.
According to the data, by the end of 2017, the output value of Chongqing's electronic manufacturing industry reached 570 billion yuan, and the proportion of electronic manufacturing industry to the total industrial output value of the city rose to 24.5%, becoming an important pillar industry.
More importantly, the Chongqing integrated circuit industry has formed a polymerization advantage and has initially established the 'IC design-wafer manufacturing-package testing and raw material support' full-process system:
At the design end, there is a local Southwest Integration, China Branch Core Yida and other companies, in the RF, drive, power and other analog and digital-analog hybrid IC design direction to achieve success, but also the introduction of RDA, Fresco Cisco and other companies to develop communications , data transmission and other IC design business;
On the manufacturing side, there are two 6-inch military-military integrated chip production lines in China Electronics Corp., China Resources Microelectronics 8-inch power and analog chip production lines, and the introduction of a 12-inch power management chip production line and sealing and test line at the company.
At the packaging and testing end, local company Pingwei Industrial has entered this field, and has introduced SK hynix, Jialing new technology and other companies, built a memory chip, power device packaging test line;
At the end of raw materials, imported super-semiconductor semiconductors, Otis and other companies ranked in the domestic forefront in the direction of large-size silicon wafers and package carriers.
In addition, Chongqing’s advantage in the big data intelligent industry is also the reason for attracting the Ziguang Group. Statistics show that there are about 3,000 intelligent data industry enterprises in Chongqing, of which 900 are above-scale enterprises.
'The IC industry in Chongqing has more room for development.' According to the person in charge of the Municipal Economic and Credit Commission, Chongqing is speeding up the construction of inland open highlands, convenient logistics, and a full range of key markets to provide Chongqing with a 'core' dream. The supporting infrastructure, coupled with mature and complete industrial bases such as automotive and instrumentation, will bring immense market demand to the integrated circuit industry.
'Leading Dongfeng' ushered in the industrial development
Although the IC market is in great demand, the current domestic integrated circuit companies' design, wafer fabrication, and packaging and other production technologies still cannot fully meet the demand.
Wang Wei, Secretary-General of Chongqing Integrated Circuit Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance stated that, from the perspective of the domestic integrated circuit enterprises, the low-margin packaging and testing industry accounts for nearly half of the industrial market, while in the high-end product R&D and production areas, due to the lack of technology, With talents and financial support, the domestic integrated circuit industry is lagging behind that of foreign countries.
To this end, following the State Council's introduction of the “Outline for Promoting the Development of the National IC Industry,” the country has also established a “big fund” of 100 billion yuan to specifically invest in the local IC industry to realize the 'nationalization' of the industry.
The favorable policy level, coupled with the huge demand in the domestic market, has provided a good opportunity for the development of the domestic integrated circuit industry.
With this, 'Dongfeng', the development of the IC industry in Chongqing also ushered in opportunities to take off. The city's Economic and Information Technology Commission stated that the development of the IC industry in Chongqing has entered the 'scale, speed' stage, with the two pillars of local electronic information and automobile manufacturing. The quality and efficiency of the industry, upgrading and upgrading will bring immense market demand and platforms to the IC industry.
The strong scientific research force and talent supply will also provide intellectual support for the development of the integrated circuit industry. At present, Chongqing has successively established the Semiconductor Institute at Chongqing University and Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications to provide talent support for the integrated circuit industry, including high-end design, research and development, Testing and technical talents in the semiconductor industry line. At the same time, the IC Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance in Chongqing is also continuously attracting innovative teams and companies to enhance the research capabilities and local competitiveness of the IC industry.
As the main battlefield for the development of the integrated circuit industry in the city, the two rivers, Xiyong Micro-electricity Park and Hi-tech Zone are strengthening the integrated circuit industry chain, gradually completing the shortcomings of the industrial design, increasing the scale of wafer manufacturing, and improving the level of packaging and testing. , Accelerate the development of analog and digital-analog hybrid circuits, micro-electromechanical systems, and other special-purpose production lines. In the future, the "Chongqing-made" chip's 100 billion-class industrial dream will promote Chongqing's electronic information industry to achieve high-quality development.
Integrated circuit industry trillions of imports need to be localized
A smart phone, about its integrated circuit related products, involving wireless modules, sensors, chips, power management, flash memory, and memory. A research report shows that the cost of an integrated circuit in a mobile phone accounts for more than 40%.
However, at present, China’s IC industry is heavily dependent on external resources, and about 80% of domestic chips need to be imported. The high-end areas are almost entirely dependent on imports. According to statistics from the China Semiconductor Industry Association, since 2013, China has to import more than 200 billion US dollars of chips each year. This amount reached a new high in 2017, reaching US$260.1 billion. The chip has replaced crude oil as China’s largest import commodity.
From the perspective of the domestic integrated circuit industry, the packaging industry with low gross margin accounts for nearly half of the total, while the core technologies such as design, manufacturing, and industry scale are all small. With the recent national support for integrated circuit R&D innovation, the domestic integrated circuit industry Has achieved breakthroughs in core technologies in many fields, and achieved innovative results in the fields of mobile phone chips, IC card chips, and digital TV chips. However, in terms of general-purpose CPUs, memories, etc., At present, it is still blank in China.
In June 2014, the State Council promulgated the “Outline for Promoting the Development of the National IC Industry” to upgrade the research and development of new technologies in the semiconductor industry to the national strategic height. Wei Shaojun, director of the Institute of Microelectronics of Tsinghua University, believes that national and local governments have successively introduced supporting policies. Accelerate the full-scale outbreak of capacity in the chip industry. At present, there are chip industry projects in cities including Chongqing, Beijing and Wuhan.
Although there is still a large gap between the advanced level in foreign countries, but the development of China's integrated circuit industry still maintains an upward trend. 'The chief scientist of the China Electronics Science and Technology Group, Li Ruzhang said: The data shows that the sales volume of the chip design industry in China reached 207.35 billion yuan in 2017. For the first time, it exceeded the threshold of 200 billion yuan. In addition, in 2017, China's self-developed integrated circuit products accounted for 7.78% of the global industrial landscape, an increase of 0.48 percentage points year-on-year.
Developing Integrated Circuit Industry to Guarantee Supply of Talents
The U.S.’s recent sanctions against ZTE caused China’s “coreless” anxiety to be rekindled and quickly passed through the Internet to the entire electronic information industry and even the whole society, triggering collective thinking.
In fact, although there are gaps in the development of integrated circuit industries among domestic companies compared to advanced foreign companies, with the continuous national policy support and the continuous strengthening of independent R&D by enterprises in recent years, the gap between the two is narrowing, especially in integrated circuit design and sealing. In the field of measurement, domestic enterprises have begun to catch up.
However, after all, IC is a high-tech industry. To promote the overall improvement of this industry, we need to start from strengthening basic research and training personnel. These two tasks, especially the latter, will take a long time. Previously, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a document showing that at present, the total number of IC employees in China is less than 300,000. According to the current industrial output value, 700,000 practitioners are expected to be employed, and at least 400,000 people are in short supply.
From this point of view, the mismatch between the supply of industrial talents and the growth rate of industrial development is becoming a 'gap' in front of the IC industry in China. Therefore, the author believes that government agencies should also be good at supporting IC industry projects. Structural reforms on the supply side of integrated circuit talents—on the one hand, through the innovation of talent training methods in universities, the integration of universities, universities, and research institutes will be promoted to better discover, train, and reserve talents; on the other hand, countries or regions that can be considered for IC industries can be considered. 'Leveraging', through the introduction of talent, talent, for the current domestic high-speed development of the integrated circuit industry in a timely 'transfusion', is also a quick approach. Chongqing Daily
3. Q2 DRAM prices remain high, and NAND continues to decline due to the impact of 3D TLC
In the first quarter of the record-breaking period, NAND Flash module prices of memory module makers decreased 16.6% year-on-year and 19.6% from the previous quarter. Looking into the second quarter, DRAM contract prices in the second quarter remained high, but NAND Still oversupply, it is estimated that it will take until the second half of the year that NAND Flash price pressure will be eased.
In terms of product structure, in the first quarter, industrial control products accounted for 46.9% of total revenue, strategic products accounted for 21.8%, consumer flash products accounted for 17.8%, and standard DRAM products accounted for 13.5%.
The gross margin of the first quarter of Transcend reached 22.2%, which was the new low level in the past year. This was mainly due to the price drop of NAND Flash and the price pressure of the product, causing the gross profit margin to fall. In the non-operating segment, Transcend held the cash position in the US dollar. The proportion reached 70%. In the first quarter, due to the appreciation of the Taiwan dollar, the exchange loss was impacted.
Looking forward to the second quarter, it seems that the DRAM memory contract price will remain high in the second quarter, NAND will continue to be out of 3D TLC capacity, the market supply will increase, the oversupply situation in the second quarter will continue, and the price will probably continue. As for the industry, as the exchange rate stabilizes, the first quarter's exchange loss is expected to recover in the second quarter.
Looking forward to the second half of the year, Transcend expects that with the increase in the proportion of mobile phones equipped with NAND Flash, which will drive demand, the price pressure on NAND Flash in the second half of the year is expected to ease. Transcend will also adjust its price elastically in due course.
In addition, Transcend continues to strengthen niche strategic products, optimize product lines, including Apple upgrades, solid state drives, etc. In the field of industrial control, Transcend also introduced 3D TLC NAND flash memory embedded solutions, transmission efficiency is equal to MLC Flat (2D) Flash, but the price is more competitive. Technews
4.ARM and TSMC's 22nm manufacturing process, attacking mobile devices and IoT chip market
IP Licensing Corp. Arm announced on the 4th that its Arm Artisan physical IP will use TSMC's single-chip processor (SoC) developed for the Arm architecture and will use it for 22nm ultra-low power (ULP) Ultra-low leakage (ULL) product platform.
Arm pointed out that TSMC's 22nm ULP/ULL process is optimized for mainstream operations and IoT devices. It not only improves the performance of the SoC based on the Arm architecture, but also significantly reduces compared to TSMC's previous generation 28nm HPC+ process platform. Power consumption and chip area.
Gus Yeung, general manager of Arm's physical design business group, said that this next-generation process technology can add more features with lower power consumption and smaller area, combined with Artisan physical IP and TSMC's 22-nm ULP/ULL process platform. There are advantages in design and manufacturing costs. The two parties will provide each other's partners with immediate performance per milliwatt of computing performance, as well as the benefits of chip area savings.
Arm further pointed out that Artisan's physical IP using TSMC's 22nm ULP/ULL process technology, including a fab-sponsored memory compiler, optimizes the need for low-leakage and low-power consumption for next-generation network terminal computing devices. State. These compilers also come with a library of ultra-high-density and high-performance physical IP standard components, including a power management kit, a thick gate oxide library, etc., to help optimize low-leakage power consumption. In addition, a general-purpose type is also provided. I/O solution to ensure maximum performance, power consumption, and area (PPA) optimization.
Suk Lee, senior director of TSMC's Design and Construction Marketing Division, pointed out that Artisan's physical IP has allowed TSMC to accelerate its tape-out schedule, target mainstream IoT and mobile devices, and accelerate the listing of these industry-leading SoCs. Continued TSMC and Arm’s Based on the successful cooperation of the 28-nm HPC+ platform, TSMC and Arm have teamed up to significantly reduce power consumption and area, providing opportunities for each other's common chip design partners, and presenting more complete terminal computing experience in more devices.
Arm pointed out that under the active integration process with TSMC's 22-nanometer ULP/ULL process technology, it is ensured that the chip design partners that meet Arm's and TSMC's common partners can complete the relevant design finalization in the second half of 2018. Technews
5. The world's Q1 robust, PMIC, large-size panel and fingerprint recognition drive Q2 full production capacity
The first quarter of the world was operating steadily. Looking into the second quarter, the company is optimistic about the strong growth momentum of power management ICs, stable shipments of large-size panels, and growth in fingerprint identification sales. Currently, visibility of orders has reached the end of the season, and full-capacity production is expected in the second quarter. Estimated quarterly increase was 4.3%-10.5%. However, in the second quarter gross profit margin performance was mainly affected by factors such as electricity charges and salary adjustments of employees. Although the production capacity was fully opened, the gross profit margin was estimated to be between 31.5 and 33.5%, which was approximately the same as the previous quarter. .
The world's advanced is the world's leading manufacturer of 8-inch wafer foundry. Until the first quarter of this year, the main foundry products accounted for 30% of large-size panel driver ICs, 12% of small-size panel driver ICs, and 48% of power management ICs. Others (including fingerprint identification IC) 10%. The proportion of wafer foundry processes accounted for the proportion of revenue: 0.5 micron accounted for 26%, 0.35 micron 22%, 0.25 micron 14%, 0.18 micron and below (including 0.16 micron, 0.11 micron) 38%. The company currently has three 8-inch wafer fabs.
The company’s consolidated revenue in the first quarter was NT$6,425 million (same as below), which increased 0.8% quarter-on-quarter and increased 2.6% year-on-year. The gross profit margin was affected by the exchange rate, product mix, and production rate, which was 32.2%, down 1.74 from the previous quarter. The percentage point was about the same as that of the same period of last year. The operating profit rate was 22.5%; after-tax net profit was 1.148 billion yuan, which was a 5.7% decrease in the quarter and a 0.2% decrease in the year.
Looking ahead to the second quarter of operations, the company stated that the demand for high-current products (such as excavators) is still hot. The growth momentum of the power management ICs is strong this year, the kinetic energy of the small-sized panels is relatively slow, and the large-size panel shipments are stable. Identification ICs benefit from mobile phones, increased demand for access control, and sales growth.
The company expects its second-quarter revenue estimate to be between RMB 6.7 billion and RMB 7.1 billion, a quarterly increase of 4.3%-10.5%, affected by factors such as electricity bills and employee salary adjustment, gross profit margin estimated to be between 31.5 and 33.5%, and operating profit. The rate is estimated to be between 21% and 23%. According to industry analysis, the profitability of the company is expected to increase from the previous quarter.
The company stated that the current order visibility in the second quarter has reached the end of the season, and it is expected that the utilization rate will be fully loaded. By the second half of the year, the production efficiency will be increased as much as possible to increase the production rate to more than 100%. The total wafer shipment is expected this year. About 2% year-on-year growth in revenue from the product mix.
According to industry analysis, this year's power-related product market conditions are still optimistic. It is expected that the company's power management related products will grow by a large margin by 10% to 20% this year. Vehicle-related products account for less than 10% of total sales. In recent years, it is expected to maintain double-digit growth. However, with limited capacity, only product portfolios can be deployed, making it difficult for operations to grow significantly.