1. The Anti-Monopoly Review Big Three China's storage needs to be vigilant against the 'counter-cyclical' expansion;
Our reporter Chen Baoliang reports from Beijing
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It should be pointed out that the US Department of Justice's fine for DRAM price monopoly is 20% of sales revenue; in contrast, the proportion of domestic price monopoly cases such as Zhejiang Insurance in recent years is only 1% of sales revenue.
The terminal manufacturers complained that they had continued to increase prices. After two rounds of talks by the NDRC, anti-monopoly investigations against Samsung, Hynix, and Micron Technology’s three major memory chip giants finally started.
On May 31st, 2018, China’s anti-monopoly agencies sent a number of working groups to carry out 'raid investigations' and on-site forensics for Samsung, Hynix, and Micron’s offices in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, marking China's anti-trust agency. Officially launched investigations on three companies. At present, Samsung has publicly responded that 'is assisting the investigation'.
Samsung, Hynix, and Micron are the three largest memory chip giants in the world, occupying the vast majority of global market share in the DRAM and NAND product lines. In 2016, due to changes in industry technology and the replacement of enterprise production lines, the global memory chip market has become rare in recent years. The demand exceeds supply, and entered the price increase channel in Q3 in 2016. The cost pressures caused by subsequent price increases are passed on to mobile phones, solid-state drives, memory chips and other consumer-grade products.
Today, a number of industry sources told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that 'several giants' production capacity has already met the market, supply and demand have been balanced, and even oversupply. Although the price increase is smaller than before, the price has not fallen.' So far, the price increase cycle has continued for two years.
In December 2017, due to continuous complaints from terminal companies, the NDRC was concerned about 'the soaring price of DRAM industry'. The NDRC made an appointment with Samsung and stated that it will pay more attention to the problems caused by the industry's 'price manipulation' behavior. After the two sessions in 2018, The anti-monopoly departments of the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Commerce, and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce merged into the anti-monopoly bureau of the newly established Market Supervision Bureau. In May, the anti-monopoly department asked about Micron on the issue of price increases.
According to customs data, China's import storage in 2017 was US$88.921 billion, which was a year-on-year increase of 39.56% from US$63.714 billion in 2016. The continuous price increase of storage products has caused a high cost burden on Chinese industries.
At present, Samsung has publicly responded that 'is assisting the investigation'.
Rising prices change the industry landscape
In 2017, the global DRAM and NAND markets increased by 74% and 46% respectively, reaching US$72.2 billion and US$53.8 billion. Samsung, Hynix and Micron became the biggest beneficiaries. According to the data released by IHS Markit, in the DRAM market, The market shares of Samsung, Hynix, and Micron were 44.5%, 27.9%, and 22.9%, respectively, and the three companies accounted for 95.3% of the total. In the NAND market, Samsung, Hynix, and Micron each had market share of 39%, 10.5%, and 11.3% respectively. 60.8%.
Due to the skyrocketing storage market, global semiconductor rankings have undergone major changes. In 2017, Samsung Semiconductor's business revenue surged 50%, surpassing Intel's number one position in the world for the first time for over US$60 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, Hynix, Micron It also went up, and jumped from fourth and sixth to third and fourth respectively. According to Gartner data, Hynix and Micron revenue increased by 79% and 78%, respectively.
In the Q1-2018 Q1 price increase period in 2016, Samsung’s storage chip business revenue increased from 79.4 trillion won to 173.3 trillion won, an increase of 118%; Hynix revenue increased from 3.65 trillion won to 8.72 trillion won, an increase 139%; while Micron revenue increased from US$2.93 billion to US$7.35 billion, an increase of 151%.
During the same period, Samsung’s share price increased from 25,000 won in early 2016 to 50,000 won today, Hynix rose from 30,000 won to 90,000 won, and Micron’s share price rose from US$14 to US$58, or 314%.
It is worth mentioning that during the crazy price hike of memory chips, a law firm in the United States began to investigate this phenomenon. During an interview with the Chinese antitrust authorities, during the investigation of the Big Three, the American law firm Hagens Berman took up April 27, 2018. Japan launched an anti-monopoly class action lawsuit against Micron, Samsung, and Hynix in the Northern California District Court.
According to the law, the survey revealed that DRAM manufacturers negotiated to increase DRAM prices by limiting the supply of DRAM. In 2017, the DRAM price per bit rose by 47%, which was the largest increase in 30 years, and the price of 4GB DRAM products rose by 130%. As early as 2006, Hagens Berman had acted like a DRAM antitrust litigation, and won a settlement of $300 million for his agent.
During the global Internet crisis of 1999-2002, Samsung, Hynix, Infineon, Elpida, and Micron's five DRAM companies had reached a price agreement to control the global DRAM market price. At that time, the United States Dell, HP, Apple, IBM Computer companies and other companies directly bear the cost pressure brought by price increases. In 2002, the U.S. Department of Justice began suing these companies and made a total of 729 million U.S. dollars in penalties and monopoly income fines during 2005-2006.
'Countercycle' killer
Today, Chinese companies are far more affected by the increase in the price of memory chips than they were in the United States. In 2017, all flagship mobile phones in China have generally risen by 200-300 yuan, while memory chips have risen by as much as 300%-400 in 2017. %.
The financial report shows that in fiscal year 2017, Micron’s revenue in China was 10.3 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 51% of its total revenue. In 2017, Hynix earned 10 trillion won in China, accounting for 33.5% of its total revenue. Meanwhile, Samsung’s revenue in China was 31.6 trillion yuan. Won, accounting for 23.3% of its total revenue. Among them, Samsung China Semiconductor, Shanghai Samsung Semiconductor's 2017 revenue totaled 28.7 trillion won, about 25.39 billion US dollars.
In 2017, thanks to the increase in storage chip prices, South Korea's exports of electromechanical products to China mainland totaled 73.8 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 24.7% year-on-year.
However, compared with the pressure of price rises that China's electronics manufacturing industry is currently experiencing, more attention should be paid to the global competition faced by the Chinese storage industry.
In the 1990s, Japan’s memory chips used to account for 50% of the global market. However, Samsung successfully threw Japanese companies out of the altar through three “reversal expansions.” In the mid-1980s and the late 1990s, Samsung was always in DRAM. Increased investment during the downturn, expanded production capacity, continued to drive down prices in the industry and erode the market share of Japanese companies. During the financial crisis in 2008, DRAM particle prices fell more than 80%, while Samsung used 118% of total profits in 2007. The expansion of DRAM, which intensified the decline in prices and caused industry losses, directly accelerated the bankruptcy of Elpida in the future and laid Samsung's dominance.
In 2015 and 2016, Samsung invested 14.7 trillion in the semiconductor business and 13.1 trillion won respectively, which accounted for more than 50% of the total Capex. In 2017, capital expenditures of the Samsung Semiconductor business soared to 27.3 trillion won, or about 24.2 billion won. US dollars. Financial report shows that compared to 2016 Q1, Samsung Semiconductor's production capacity in Q18 increased by 339%.
At present, there are already many analysts predicting DARM, and the NAND market will oversupply. At this time, Hynix expects capital expenditures of US$ 11.5 billion in 2018. Although Samsung did not announce its capital plan for 2018, its Q1 capital expenditure still keeps rising. .
The situation is similar to Samsung's several previous deflations. This is not optimistic for China's NAND and DRAM industries. This means that when China's two DRAMs, a NAND plant will enter the mass production phase, it will face Severe price competition. Obviously, the international giants who made profit-raising in 2017 are far more able to withstand price wars than Chinese companies.
In addition to the price war, Chinese companies may also face competitive measures such as litigation and supply control. According to informed sources, Micron Technology has reached an exclusive agreement with semiconductor equipment manufacturers to restrict the supply of semiconductor equipment to Jinhua, Fujian.
A few days ago, China Mobile's China Union Secretary-General Lao Zi issued a statement calling for: 'As the world's largest electronics manufacturing base, China needs a stronger market surveillance agency to ensure a fair and just market competition order.'
According to financial report statistics, in 2016 and 2017, the three companies’ revenues from semiconductor-related businesses in China totaled 31.6 billion U.S. dollars and 44.68 billion U.S. dollars, respectively.
In accordance with the Anti-Monopoly Law and the Anti-Price Monopoly Regulation, if the operator has a monopolistic price, it shall be punished in accordance with Article 46, Article 47, and Article 49 of the Anti-Monopoly Law. The sales amount is 1%-10% fine, and the duration of illegal activities needs to be considered. On this basis, if the three giants are found to have price monopolistic behavior, the fines may be between 440 million U.S. dollars and 4.4 billion U.S. dollars, and 800 million U.S. dollars. Between 8 billion US dollars.
It should be pointed out that the US Department of Justice’s fine for DRAM price monopoly is 20% of sales revenue. In contrast, in recent domestic price monopolies such as Zhejiang Insurance and Jilin Cement, the punishment ratio is only 1% of sales revenue.
For the memory chip industry with a gross margin of 60%, the penalty of 1% is insignificant compared to the profit from monopolistic behavior. 21st Century Business Herald 2. Violet invests heavily in semiconductors and is highly concerned by Japan;
China Yangtze Optical Group's memory plant, Yangtze Storage Technologies, held a semiconductor equipment installation ceremony on April 11, 2018, and announced the news of President Xi Jinping's visit to the production line on the 26th. According to a report from the Nikkei website, this shows that the mainland has Key semiconductor products and technologies are subject to foreign concerns, but Japan also holds a high degree of concern for mainland China’s semiconductor investment. The mainland’s concern lies in the Yangtze River’s storage of the installed production equipment. It is a 3D NAND flash memory production facility. It is planned to begin production of 32-layer 3D NAND flash memory in 2018. Although this progress is four years later than South Korea's electronics giant Samsung Electronics, it is at least a key step for the mainland to get rid of the need for overseas manufacturers to manufacture NAND flash memory. The reasons for Japan’s concern, according to an interview by a Nikkei reporter on May 21, 2018, the first buildings of the three factories are stepping up and down, with about 1,000 people entering and leaving every day, including many Japanese semiconductor equipment manufacturers and also from the United States. Silicon Valley, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea’s talented semiconductor industry highlight the continent’s ambitions. Japan is concerned about the issue of talents and technology outflow. In the plan of Ziguang, Changjiang Storage Wuhan Plant has invested equivalent to 3 trillion yen (about 27.5 billion U.S. dollars), and will invest more than 100 billion U.S. dollars before 2025, until 2025. , Wuhan plant's 3D NAND flash memory capacity, will reach the current world's largest NAND flash memory factory, Japan's Toshiba Memory (TMC) Yokkaichi factory 1.5 times, 1 million per month. Although advanced semiconductor production is not to buy equipment Immediate shipments will also require many adjustments and improvements to product yields, not to mention the technology introduced by Changjiang Storage Technology, which has lagged behind major international NAND flash memory vendors, but has an investment plan that is much larger than Toshiba's memory and has 10 years of time. With a large number of talented people, a small number of semiconductor products that are still internationally competitive in Japan, NAND flash memory, will be critical. As for patent obstacles, Ziguang Group is now active in overseas acquisitions and funding methods, hoping to obtain cooperation partners, mergers and acquisitions Although Micron Technology was blocked by the U.S. government, Ziguang still had technical cooperation discussions with Micron and Intel. It is hoped to obtain a number of patent rights, and it is now relatively minor to evade the trade war between the United States and the mainland. However, according to the Nikkei, it continues to be promoted. Economic Daily 3. The strong growth of the fabless manufacturers Emerging technologies to promote the upgrade of the semiconductor industry;
Reporter: Shaohui Shao, Shanghai Report
Recently, a report released by Technavio, a technology and industry research organization, showed that the global fabless IC market will continue to maintain a strong growth rate driven by the demand of emerging frontier technologies, and the compound annual growth rate will reach 7.9% from 2018 to 2022. .
In the early 1980s, typical semiconductor manufacturers all needed to complete their own work including the development of IC design programs, design and manufacture of related equipment, and packaging and testing.
'At that time, the industry has not yet reached the node of 1 micron process. With the development of the industry, the process size continues to shrink, the integration becomes more and more complex, the cost of the IDM model is growing exponentially. 'Market research agency Strategy Analytics RF and wireless Chris Taylor, Director of Component Research Services, told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter.
As the characteristics of economies of scale in semiconductor manufacturing become more obvious, high investment costs have made it impossible for many manufacturers to expand. In this context, only the circuit design of the hardware chip is performed, and the design is then transferred to the foundry as a finished product. And the fabless operation mode that is responsible for selling the products began to rise, and the vertical division of labor pattern is booming.
Fabless mode continues
From Taylor’s point of view, the establishment of a wafer foundry company, TSMC, in 1987 was an important milestone in the development of a fabless model. Taylor believes: “Now, for a semiconductor company, completing all processes by itself has become Possibly. Even giants like Intel need to be entrusted to some foundries, and the design software and manufacturing equipment are all dependent on third parties.
The advantages of light travel have led to the prosperity of the fabless manufacturers. IC Insights data from the semiconductor industry analysis agency shows that between 2000 and 2016, the growth rate of global fabless manufacturers was lower than that of IDM manufacturers only in 2010 and 2015. twice.
In 2003, Qualcomm became the first pure IC design company to enter the world's top 20 semiconductor manufacturers with US$2.4 billion in revenue that year. Fabless manufacturers officially began to occupy an important position in the semiconductor industry. By 2018, In the first quarter, the industry had four top-ranked vendors including Broadcom, Qualcomm, Invista, and Apple. In addition, TSMC, which is engaged in OEM, ranked third.
Qualcomm, which ranks among the No. 1 vendors in revenue in 2017, is one of the representatives of this model. The success of this model has already been proven in it.
In 1985, when Qualcomm was founded, Qualcomm was focusing on the development of cellular systems and its corresponding core standards. At that time, the company had an infrastructure department, a chip business unit, a research and development department, and a mobile business unit. It is a vertically integrated enterprise, which helps us to formulate industrial technology standards. A spokesman for Qualcomm said in an interview to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter.
However, with the development of standards in this area, we realize that vertical integration is not necessary. Therefore, we have sold the rest of the division and become a more focused semiconductor company, and at the same time it has become the core foundation R&D engine of the industry. He said.
East Asia occupies an important position in the foundry industry, which also shows the global division of labor under the OEM model. According to data updated by TrendForce on May 24, the top 10 crystals in the first quarter of 2018 The foundry manufacturers, Taiwan, China, and South Korea accounted for 7 seats in total, with a market share of 83.6%.
'The important thing is that our products are designed to meet the future needs of our customers. It also depends on the degree of help that the foundry's business can provide, guarantees our shipments, and balances the capacity of each business unit.' People said, 'The division of globalization has been part of our strategy. At present, this is very effective.'
However, in 2017, the growth of the fabless vendors once again lags behind the IDM vendors, although this year's revenue for the first time exceeded 100 billion US dollars for the first time. But IC Insights pointed out that this is actually more from this wave of the storage market in recent years. Rising tides: Storage vendors use IDM models. Take DRAM as an example: In 2017, global IC market growth rate reached 25%, excluding DRAM growth rate was only 16%.
Lin Jianhong, a research manager at Jibang Consulting's Tuobai Industrial Research Institute, pointed out to 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the trade-off between IDM and fabless model is often related to the manufacturer’s own product and scale. If the sales scale of the product is still growing at a high speed, the IDM model can also There is good growth momentum, and today's DRAM and NAND flash are examples.
Cutting-edge technology drives industry growth
Technavio believes that with the increasing demand for IoT devices for interoperability and the rise of networking devices, IC vendors need to collaborate on the development of open source platforms to set interoperability standards and requirements between corresponding IoT devices. In addition, the report also emphasizes The automotive industry has driven the growth of fabless manufacturers.
'The automotive market is expected to continue to grow over the forecast period. Affected by this, it can support partial or highly automated, until the demand for fully-automated semiconductor integrated circuits will grow significantly.' A Technavio analyst said.
And still taking Qualcomm as an example, its rise is also inseparable from technological innovation. With the development of cellular network technology in the early 1990s, mobile telephony began to gain popularity, and call quality was also improving. However, Qualcomm had already Start working on mobile data network applications.
'Probably since 1993, we have begun to apply some of the IP in the PC field to cellular networks and introduced some of the Internet protocols into the standards of the cellular network. 'The above-mentioned Qualcomm spokesperson told the 21st Century Business Herald, 'Although it was The development of the Internet is obviously faster than that of mobile networks, but we have already completed the basic design layout at that time. We are optimistic about the future of mobile networks. Everyone will own a mobile phone and access the mobile network through mobile phones. This will become a trend. '
Qualcomm, which has led many 'G' upgrades, has not missed the list since it first entered the world’s top 10 semiconductor manufacturers in 2008. In 2017, Qualcomm’s revenue ranks among the world's semiconductor manufacturers (without wafer foundry). 6th, while still waiting for approval to complete the acquisition from Qualcomm, NXP ranked 10th.
However, in the 'fourth technological revolution' led by cutting-edge technologies such as 5G, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence, Qualcomm’s new 'Vision' is expanding beyond its 'mobile phone' that it succeeds.
'We believe that almost all terminals in the future will be connected and intelligent, and a large part of this will be born out of the smart phone industry. Our experience and core technologies in this field have put us in a good position.' said Qualcomm.
This is reflected in Qualcomm's attitude toward 5G, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence. Qualcomm introduced that with the trend of the Internet of Things, as more and more devices become more intelligent and networked, the application scenarios will become more Made specific, so there will be customized chips for different vertical domains.
In addition, Qualcomm believes that the upgrade of 4G to 5G will no longer be limited to the enhancement of mobile communications and data transmission. Industries such as the Internet of Things, consumer electronics, healthcare, etc. will all be 5G applications, which will require the addition of mobile phone manufacturers. , Network operators, infrastructure vendors and semiconductor manufacturers, there are more industries involved in its definition. 5G will become a more flexible network architecture not only to meet the mobile phone industry. 21st Century Business Herald
4. National Manufacturing Innovation Center settled in Fudan Zhangjiang Campus Focusing on integrated circuit R&D;
The National IC Innovation Center located on the Zhangjiang Campus of Fudan University was approved by the Shanghai IC Manufacturing Innovation Center in January this year. A few days ago, the experts from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering attended the demonstration meeting. Passed the center's 'upgrade' as a national manufacturing innovation center construction program.
First-class platform: research, production and research work together
Professor Wei Zhang, Executive Dean of the School of Microelectronics at Fudan University, said that the center relies on the Shanghai IC Manufacturing Innovation Center Co., Ltd. and adopts the “company + alliance” integration of production, teaching and research, led by Fudan University, and joint industry leader SMIC. Hua Hong Group, etc., established an upstream and downstream collaborative mechanism for the integrated circuit industry chain, and was established through a collaborative innovation model for the industry. Shanghai IC Manufacturing Innovation Center Co., Ltd. is an entity funded by Fudan University, SMIC, and Shanghai Hua Hong Group. Among them, SMIC is the largest and most technologically advanced integrated circuit foundry in China, and one of the world’s leading integrated circuit foundry companies. Huahong Group is the result and carrier of the national “909” project. The IC industry group is a multi-service platform with the core of integrated circuit manufacturing business. The Fudan University’s microelectronics discipline originated from the semi-conductor physics profession established by Mr. Xie Hede in the 1950s, and enjoys high reputation both at home and abroad. The only national key laboratory for integrated circuit design in domestic universities - 'Dedicated To State Key Laboratory of Circuits and Systems'.
Innovations: Fast, low-cost memory
There is a three-story small building on the Zhangjiang Campus, with 28 full-time 'Warriors'. This is the current home of the national center. In recent years, it has been relying on an enthusiasm and has made important innovations. Dean Zhang Wei said: 'We The research and development of semi-floating gate device is a new principle of microelectronic basic device. It skillfully combines the tunneling field effect transistor (TEET) and floating-gate transistor to form a new principle of microelectronic device. It is named as Semi-Floating Gate Transistor (SFGT). Its advantages are fast speed and low power consumption. This achievement has received extensive attention from international counterparts. When evaluating this achievement, it is called 'The hybrid racecar in the transistor debuted'. ' A US technology consulting firm commented on this achievement: 'The semi-floating-gate transistor can solve the technical problems faced by the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip, with potential technology Ability to replace DRAM. '
In addition, semi-floating gate transistors can also be used in the cache of CPU chips. Existing caches generally use an SRAM structure composed of 6 transistors, which has a low integration level and a large occupied area. If semi-floating-gate transistors are used, the area can be reduced to the original size. 20%. SFGT can also be applied to the image sensor chip (APS) to increase the fill factor and significantly increase the resolution and sensitivity of the image sensor chip.
Research and Development Goal: 3nm Integrated Circuits
Professor Zhang Wei’s heart is quite practical now. The National Integrated Circuit Innovation Center led by Fudan University can give full play to the advantages of resource sharing in universities and research institutes, and build a common technology research and development platform for cooperation among the industry; better Gather high-end talents, carry out sourcing innovations, master core technologies to enhance the international cooperation capabilities in the integrated circuit field, provide services for the upgrading of China's integrated circuit industry technology, and provide talent support for industrial development.
'We are a neutral, public common technology research and development platform, which is not the same as our R&D center. Our R&D center is mainly engaged in the research and development of target product technology. Our center is aiming at the key common technology of integrated circuits, highlighting common technology research and development. Capacity, industry service and the ability to transform results. 'Wei Zhang said, common technology research and development is currently focused on 5 nanometer and below common technology of integrated circuits, focused on the new device new process R & D, the purpose is to address China's integrated circuit mainstream technology choice With the source of reliable technology, support for high-end chips to achieve production in domestic manufacturing companies. 'The Center is currently developing new devices and new processes such as nanowire fence devices, semi-floating-gate transistors, etc., and will be systematically integrated by the end of 2022. Technology research and development, open up the key process of 5 nanometer integrated circuits, and carry out research and development of 3-nanometer forward technology, build integrated circuit advanced technology innovation center with international influence. ' Zhang Wei introduced that Fudan University has planned to build about 2.9 in Zhangjiang Campus. 10,000 square meters of micro-nano electronic building, the future will be used for the integration of this country The circuit innovation center strives to create an integrated circuit R&D 'first square array' consisting of 180 full-time scientific researchers in three years.
Xinmin Evening News Chief Reporter Wang Wei
5. Hua Hong Semiconductor is breaking the top of the company's monthly production of 40,000 chips;
Hua Hong Semiconductor (19.9, 0.08, 0.40%) (01347) is now up 1.92% at 20.2 yuan, and about 114 million shares have been traded, with a total investment of 23.05 million yuan. The intraday high reached 20.55 yuan.
The Hang Seng Index is now at 30923, up 430 points, and the motherboard turnover is 18.894 billion yuan.
It is reported that Hua Hong plans to increase the production capacity of the unblemished production line to reach 40,000 chips per month by 2020. The company has previously won the rating of Macquarie Outperform, with a target price of 23 yuan.