1. Why does Alibaba not do a closed IoT industry chain?
What is the Internet of Things? What year is the first year of the Internet of Things? In the context of the collective awakening of the Internet of Things giants in recent years, how to define these concepts has become less important.
It is true that, whether it is officially releasing the Internet of Things strategy this year, Alibaba, which announced its full entry into the Internet of Things, is still heavily invested in Microsoft, Amazon, and the global giants at home and abroad have already targeted the upcoming Internet of Things market in Ali. Among them, Alibaba listed IoT as the new main track after the relay, finance, logistics, and cloud computing.
In our impression, Alibaba may still be the one who "occupied" our shopping cart, but in reality, Alibaba wants to do more than that.
Alibaba from 'People's Network' to 'Internet of Things'
At the 2018 Yunqi Conference and Shenzhen Summit held in March this year, Alibaba Group senior vice president, Alibaba President Hu Xiaoming officially announced that Alibaba will fully enter the Internet of Things field. This announcement may seem very late, but Ali Baba’s actions are not slow.
As early as 2008, Alibaba developed the 'cloud computing' and 'big data' strategies, established a cloud service platform based on the flying operating system, and seized the wave of cloud computing development, becoming a domestic The largest cloud computing vendors are even among the best in the world.
The success of Alibaba's cloud computing business also laid the foundation for the development of Alibaba's IoT. In April 2017, Alibaba IoT Division was announced.
As mentioned before, although many companies have proposed their own IoT strategies, due to their different positioning and industry, when launching the Internet of Things, the solutions introduced are not the same, and can even be said to be varied. .
Alibaba, based on its original cloud computing business, will inevitably give more relevant functions when developing the Internet of Things business.
It is precisely because of this, in the view of Alibaba, the past 20 years is the era of 'people's network', and the next 20 years is the era of 'Internet of Things'.
The former is the digitization of human activities through e-commerce, social, cultural and recreational activities, which has spawned the booming Internet market today.
The latter is to digitize the entire physical world, from forests, rivers to roads, cars, everything, everything, the so-called 'Internet of Everything', the ultimate goal is to achieve 'things' and 'things ', 'The interaction between 'object' and 'human' will far outweigh the 'human network'.
In the process, Alibaba Cloud IoT also set a very clear positioning for itself, that is, the builder of the Internet of Things infrastructure. The core value lies in solving three major problems: First, providing open, inclusive IoT connectivity Platform; second, to provide powerful AI capabilities; third, to achieve cloud, end-to-end collaborative computing.
Taking smart city construction as an example, in order to achieve this goal, in October 2017, Alibaba Cloud launched the Alibaba Cloud City Link City IoT platform, providing a cloud, edge and end smart city solution, through the establishment of local Internet of Things. The platform accelerates access to urban components, unifies data standards, enhances urban governance efficiency, and enables people's livelihood experience and comprehensive coordination.
In addition, in response to the new challenges brought by the Internet of Things, Alibaba Cloud will be the world's first 'everything cloud' in the emerging technology field of 'edge computing' in 2018.
The world's first 'everything cloud'
In Alibaba's IoT view, IoT is like a ubiquitous neural network that connects and collects data and digitizes objects; but without a brain connection, it is only a vegetative person, which requires the ability of AI; and behind the intelligence is computing power, like The heart provides a constant source of power.
IoT, AI and cloud computing are the 'three troikas' that realize the intelligent interconnection of all things in the entire IoT strategy of Alibaba Cloud IoT. With the 'Troika', Alibaba Cloud IoT will be able to be in the city, car, life, manufacturing, etc. The results of flowering in multiple fields, where the edge calculation is the field of Alibaba Cloud IoT's latest plan in 2018.
It is predicted that by 2020, the global IoT equipment will reach 26 billion units, and the market size will reach 1.9 trillion US dollars. For example, smart door locks need to rely on the home gateway for biometric processing; auto-driving cars for data transmission and interaction delay The requirements are very high.
How to solve these problems faster and better? The concept of edge computing is born. It can be said that edge calculation is closer to the data source, can process data quickly, make judgments in real time, solve the problem of delay and fast processing.
Today, Alibaba Cloud's core capabilities are based on the computing power of the data center, but in the era of the Internet of Everything, this capability needs to be seamlessly extended to the edge computing closer.
Hu Xiaoming emphasized that Alibaba Cloud is calculating the edge of the global layout, making calculations ubiquitous and realizing all things. In the future, the data center will continue to undertake a large number of computing tasks, and some real-time decision-making and autonomous collaboration processes will shift to edge computing, forming a cloud edge. Side collaborative computing.
Chip on 'cloud' 'end'
But whether it's cloud computing, AI or IoT, any of these 'troika' can't be separated from the chip.
Therefore, we can also see that the international giants who are in the field of IoT are competing to develop AI chips.
In 2016, Google announced the production of chips that can quickly train the AI model. Intel acquired the AI chip startup Nervana. Looking at the domestic market, Baidu released a 256-core cloud computing acceleration chip in August last year. Ali is no exception.
Since chip development is a long-cycle process, it is difficult to make a big breakthrough in a short period of time. Therefore, we are currently seeing Alibaba's actions in the chip field have accumulated for a long time.
On March 9, 2017, Ma Yun launched the Ali 'NASA' program for the first time at the Alibaba Technology Summit and named five core technologies, namely machine learning, chips, IoT, operating systems and biometrics.
Thereafter, in October 2017, Ali established the Dharma Institute and announced that it will invest 100 billion yuan into technical research, including the AI chip. On April 20, 2018, Alibaba announced that it will acquire the only independent embedded in mainland China. CPU IP Core company - Zhongtian Microsystems Co., Ltd.
Zhongtian Micro is the only independent embedded CPU IP Core company in mainland China. Ali hopes to realize the self-control of the chip with Zhongtianwei, which is of great significance to Ali.
In addition, Ali also invested in Barefoot Networks, Cambrian, Shenjian, Nengeng, Qijie Technology and other chip companies.
Why does Alibaba think of entering the chip industry?
In view of the current business line of Alibaba, in order to make breakthroughs in the chip field, the most likely is in the field of cloud computing and artificial intelligence chips.
On the one hand, as mentioned before, Alibaba has invested in a number of chip companies, many of which have made great achievements in these areas, and it is not difficult to succeed on this basis.
On the other hand, combined with the existing foundation and advantages of Alibaba Cloud IoT, it can provide developers and enterprises with the underlying chip architecture and computing power, combining chips and cloud computing, complement each other, complement each other and make it easier to succeed.
Although it is not an easy task to provide a deep learning computing solution through the cloud, there are already manufacturers around the world who are doing this kind of thing. Alibaba is one of them, and Google is also a family, since the giants are doing it. , then at least that this field is promising, and may even become a trend in the future.
Do not close the IoT industry chain
Perhaps many people think that the Internet giant's entry into the IoT and chip fields is not an easy task, but the new catalysts that come into this market can always produce 'chemical reactions' and even change the market.
And Alibaba Cloud IoT has a very clear understanding of its own positioning, as mentioned before, to build the Internet of Things infrastructure.
According to the multi-party information, Alibaba Cloud IoT infrastructure builder positioning is not to build a closed IoT industry chain. Alibaba Cloud IoT's focus is to export the basic core capabilities of the Internet of Things platform, operating system, AI and edge computing technology. Other chips, modules, connections, applications and solutions are released, handed over to the market and collaborative ecology.
In addition, in the industrial ecology, learning from each other is a common strategy. The implementation of Alibaba Cloud IoT strategy, its potential partners will be distributed in the chip, module, connection, application, terminal and other fields.
After all, for Alibaba Cloud IoT, the core of the Internet of Things is not the object, but the connection between the objects, so that it can be intelligent, and establish a smart Internet of Things. If there is no intelligent Internet of Things, there is not much significance. 4. To establish such a network, a closed industrial chain is obviously impossible.
In the future, the Internet of Things will abstract the physical world into a digital world; the digital world will allow us to re-recognize the physical world; and ultimately, the digital IoT world based on interconnection, interoperability, and interaction will revolutionize us. The era, this may be the ultimate goal of Alibaba Cloud IoT! (Proofreading / Jimmy)
2. The semiconductor market in the second half of the year is basically established;
Due to tight supply and increased demand, the protagonist of the price increase in the semiconductor field in 2018 may become a passive component represented by MLCC and a power device represented by MOSFET. According to industry insiders, the rapid increase in application demand, coupled with the expansion of production The short-term effect of the effect is difficult to reflect, leading to a high degree of prosperity in this field until at least 2019.
Some products are in short supply
After the third quarter of 2017, the passive components represented by MLCC were affected by the tight supply capacity, and the price rose sharply. In 2018, the industry continued to increase the price, Taiwanese manufacturers Guoju, Huaxin Branch repeatedly raised prices, A-share listed company mainland MLCC leader Fenghua Hi-Tech also raised the price of its products in the near future. Fenghua Hi-Tech said on the interactive platform that the resistor and capacitor products are fully loaded.
In the first quarter of 2018, Fenghua Hi-Tech achieved revenue of 842 million yuan, an increase of 35.17% year-on-year. The net profit attributable to shareholders of listed companies was 116 million yuan, an increase of 327.69% year-on-year. The company said that the increase in performance mainly benefited from the passive component market, the company The main product orders are in short supply. The company expects net profit in the first half of 2018 to be about 280 million yuan - 320 million yuan, an increase of 150.7% - 18.651% year-on-year. The company said in an investor survey that it is promoting the expansion plan as planned.
Similar to the passive component market, power devices such as MOSFET chips are also entering a tight market. Zhongtai Securities believes that this round of electronic component products is increasing in price and showing a growing trend. In essence, it is a continuous increase in silicon content. Artificial intelligence, automotive electronics, Industrial control, the Internet of Things and other fields are driving the demand for semiconductor components, and MOSFET is one of the most commonly used power semiconductor devices, especially in the field of new energy vehicles.
According to the IHS report, the transition from diesel locomotives to electric vehicles (not considering hybrid vehicles for the time being), the value of each vehicle's power semiconductor is expected to rise from $17 to $260.
An analog chip design engineer believes that the main logic of the above products is that the 'application end market is up, but the capacity volume has not kept up for a while, such as the performance of smart phone terminals continues to increase, the usage will be very high, an iPhone X MLCC The dosage is more than 1000'.
Raising bargaining power
'All aspects of production capacity can not be opened, the foundry is adjusting the price upwards, the capacity of the packaging and testing plant is also tight', the above analog chip design engineer told the China Securities Journal reporter.
The current price increase of analog devices, power devices, MCUs, MEMS sensing and other products does not require high-end process, mainly from the 8-inch wafer manufacturing line, but 8-inch wafer manufacturing capacity is difficult to increase in a short time. Public information display At present, silicon fabs and wafer foundries in the 8-inch wafer industry chain are fully loaded. According to Digitimes data, the capacity of major foundry capacity in Taiwan climbed to 94.7% as of June 2018. According to data from GF Securities, at least in 2019, global 8-inch wafer capacity will remain tight.
Recently, Taiwan's foundry UMC has raised the price of 8-inch wafer foundry, which is expected to increase by about 20%. Guojin Securities analysts believe that SMIC, Hua Hong Semiconductor's 8-inch wafer foundry business also has strong expectations. .
Hong Kong-listed company Huahong Semiconductor's recent results are bright, and its share price has risen for many days. The company's gross profit margin in 2017 increased by 2.52% year-on-year, the first quarter of 2018 gross margin was around 32.07%, and the net profit margin reached 18.56%. Net interest rates have continued to increase in the past five years.
Li Lei (pseudonym), a senior industry official, told China Securities Journal that the rise in the price of 8-inch wafer foundry was the result of a combination of factors. 'In terms of demand, demand for applications including automobiles and industrial controls has driven the growth of power semiconductors; On the other hand, the 8-inch fabs in the past few years have been shut down, and the capacity expansion is difficult. The main reason is that they cannot buy equipment. In addition, the supply of silicon wafers is also difficult.
GF Securities said that 8-inch fabs still have some cost advantages over 12-inch fabs in some products. However, 8-inch fabs have gradually declined after reaching a peak of 200 in 2007. 2008-2016 The world's 37 8-inch fabs were shut down, while 15 fabs were switched from 8 inches to 12 inches. By 2016, the global 8-inch wafer fabs were reduced to around 180.
Li Lei said that the main bottleneck restricting the expansion of 8-inch fabs is on the equipment side. 'There are no new equipments in foreign countries, all of which are used to buy second-hand, but there are many domestic 8-inch equipments, but most of them still have domestic equipment. Not particularly trusting. '
'The future 8-inch OEM price increase will not be very high, after all, the 8-inch OEM also has a ceiling, there are 12 inches above. If the 8-inch OEM price exceeds 12 inches, it loses the cost advantage. 'Li Lei reminds. China Securities Journal
3. Guoke Micro and the Big Fund set up Hunan Xinsheng Investment Co., Ltd., or involved related party transactions;
On the evening of June 29, Guoke Micro announced that recently, the company and the National Fund, Shenzhen Hongtai Fund Investment Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as 'Shenzhen Hongtai') jointly invested to establish a limited partnership. , completed the industrial and commercial registration procedures, the name of the partnership enterprise is determined as: Hunan Xinsheng Equity Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership), registered in Changsha City.
Announcement disclosed, the partnership company - Hunan Xinsheng Equity Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership) engaged in non-listed equity investment activities and related consulting services, and has obtained the "Business License" issued by the Yuelu Branch of Changsha Municipal Administration for Industry and Commerce. Credit code: 91430104MA4PNFQW0W, the residence is 17th Floor, Building A, Yulin International Building, 53 Binjiang Road, Guanshaling Street, Yuelu District, Changsha City, Hunan Province (clustered registration).
On June 4 this year, Guoke Micro held the 18th meeting of the first board of directors, and reviewed and approved the “Proposal on the Company's Cooperation to Establish a Limited Partnership Enterprise in Cooperation with Professional Institutions”, and co-invested with the National Fund, Shenzhen Hongtai. Establish a limited partnership, and Shenzhen Hongtai as a general partner, the National Fund and the company as a limited partner.
It is reported that the partnership company, Hunan Xinsheng Equity Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership), has subscribed for a total investment of RMB 254 million, and the general partner Shenzhen Hongtai has subscribed for a capital of RMB 1 million. The limited partner National Fund recognizes The amount of funds paid was RMB 150 million; Gu Kewei as a limited partner recognized the amount of funds of RMB 103 million.
The partner, Shenzhen Hongtai, was established in 2016 and is a financial institution specializing in private fund investment management.
However, the author found through the eye inspection that Shenzhen Hongtai's second largest shareholder Huang Xueliang holds 30% of the shares, as a director of Shenzhen Hongtai, and also chairman of Shenzhen Guokewei. From February 2004 to present, Huang Xueliang served as Shenzhen Guokewei Chairman of Technology Co., Ltd.
Shenzhen Guoke Micro has a relationship with the listed company Guokewei. The above investment transactions may have related transactions; however, Guoke Micro did not disclose and explain whether there is a specific insider and whether there are related transactions.
4. Is Mito doing the chip in the flicker?
AI chips also have to follow the development rules and business models of the traditional chip industry. From this perspective, today's Mito may not be suitable for catching the AI chip.
Caijing reporter Zhou Yuan / Wen Xie Lirong / Editor
On June 27, Mito (01357.HK) announced its entry into the chip field and will launch MT-AI image processing chips.
Meitu believes that the company has encountered hardware performance limitations in exploring mobile image processing technology. Existing mobile phone hardware cannot efficiently support some cutting-edge imaging technologies that require huge amounts of computation, such as night-time camera noise reduction. The company hopes to break through the underlying chip level outside of the software solution.
In 2013, I started to get involved in the smart phone market with the launch of the 'Meitu Xiu Xiu' application, focusing on the 'beauty phone' for female users.
From a technical point of view, the tight combination of hardware and software can indeed bring better performance, but the chip is a high-tech industry, even if there is more than one attribute of 'AI', it still has to follow the basic rules and business of the traditional chip industry. Mode. From the perspective of chip rules and business models, today's Mito may not be suitable for chips.
Chip development is a long-term behavior. It must have a roadmap for iterative upgrade. The cost of early development is extremely high. The number of engineers required for the design of a single chip ranges from tens of tens of tens, and the development cost is tens of millions of dollars. More than a hundred million dollars, the cycle lasts for one to two years.
The tens of millions of dollars of chip research and development costs are very stressful for Meitu. The company's financial report shows that in 2016, Meitu's revenue was 1.58 billion yuan, and the net loss was as high as 540 million yuan. In 2017, benefiting from the growth of mobile phone sales, The revenue of Meitu has increased significantly, reaching RMB 4.528 billion and the net loss has decreased to RMB 46 million.
In fact, Meitu's profitability has been questioned. The company's Hong Kong listing fell below the issue price of HK$8.5 on the first day of listing. Since then, it has been on a downward trend. It has fallen to HK$6.17 this year and is one of the worst performing tech stocks in Hong Kong. .
Even if Mito can successfully raise funds for chips, the Mito, which the Internet company started, still cannot follow the other iron laws of the chip industry.
Song Jiqiang, president of Intel China Research Institute, mentioned that AI did give some companies the opportunity to make chips, especially those companies with application scenarios, but the scene must be large, because the chip is on the volume, there is no amount to dilute the pre-development Cost, there is no competitiveness.
Mito produces mobile phones. In theory, the chips produced can at least be used by themselves, but they can only be used by themselves. Unless Mito has created a chip with 'performance against the sky', other Chinese mobile phone manufacturers are unlikely to go. Using Mito's image processing chip, this means that although there are scenes in the Mito, the scene is not big enough, because the sales of Mito phones are too small.
Although Mito started to make mobile phones in 2013, until 2017, Mito’s mobile phone shipments were only 1.57 million units, while in 2017 China’s smartphone shipments were 444.3 million units (IDC data), from market share and brand awareness. In other words, Mito's position in China's smartphone brand manufacturers is extremely low.
As mentioned before, the development cycle of a single chip is about 1.5 to 2 years. It is assumed that the Meitu chip will be mass-produced two years later. At the same time, the US group can double the mobile phone sales in the fiercely competitive Chinese mobile phone market. The mobile phone of Meitu chip is only about three million.
But three million is only an entry-level quantity for the chip. The development cost of the diluted chip is very limited, and even increases the overall cost of the Meitu mobile phone. The profit of the Android smartphone is meager, and the mobile phone manufacturers are big. In the price war, the profit margin left to the US Totem is very small, it is hard to imagine that it can accommodate the self-developed chip.
In addition to the cost perspective, the necessity of Meitu's self-developed mobile phone image processing chip can be questioned from another angle.
Junzhong Jiu, managing director of Junlian Capital, believes that because mobile phone chips require low power consumption, mobile phone chips have been developing toward high integration for many years. It may be difficult to have independent AI chip categories in mobile phones. AI functions will be integrated into the future. Mobile application chip (AP chip).
For example, in the past, there were chord chips and MP3 chips in mobile phones, but they were later integrated by baseband chips. Those who made chord chips and MP3 chips disappeared.
Mito's high probability will encounter such a flaw. The US target is only to develop a dedicated chip for image processing. The main chip (AP chip) still uses mainstream mobile phone chips on the market, such as Qualcomm and MediaTek chips. Integrating various chips on the main chip. AI function is something that mobile phone chip makers are scrambling to do. For example, Meitu's latest T9 mobile phone uses Qualcomm Snapdragon 666 chip, Qualcomm Snapdragon 666 integrates Qualcomm's own image processing technology to provide smooth zoom and fast auto focus for mobile phones. Features, and more realistic colors.
Imagine, if two years later, Qualcomm and MediaTek's mobile phone chips have integrated good image processing functions, how much is the existence value of the Meitu chip?
5. The total investment is 3 billion! The National Science and Technology Micro-Changzhou storage project is progressing smoothly;
Title: A total investment of 3 billion yuan! The National Science and Technology Micro-Changzhou storage project progressed smoothly, and the office was officially opened in July.
Set micro-network news (text / spring and summer) On the afternoon of June 27th, leaders of Wujin District, Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province observed the construction of key projects in 8 provinces and cities including Guokewei.
On April 20, Guoke Micro officially signed a contract with Changzhou IC Eco-Industrial Park in Wujin National High-tech Zone to establish Jiangsu Guoke Storage Technology Co., Ltd. with a total investment of 3 billion yuan. Guoke Micro plans to invest 1 billion yuan this year to carry out the project. Construction, renting R&D office space of 5,000 square meters, and plans to officially launch 3,500 square meters of office in July. Wujin District Mayor Dai Shifu expressed appreciation for the smooth progress of the project and encouraged it to accelerate the construction of R&D center. Meanwhile, Dai Shifu All departments at all levels are required to fully support the construction of the project and promote the completion of the project as soon as possible.
It is reported that Jiangsu Guoke Storage Technology Co., Ltd. will introduce 200 R&D designers during the year, mainly engaged in driver chip, trusted computing, national security, multimedia chip, communication, artificial intelligence and other chip design business, forming chip design and development capabilities.
In fact, Gu Kewei's semiconductor industry layout in Jiangsu does not stop there. Among them, Guoke Micro and National IC Industry Investment Fund (Big Fund), Shenzhen Hongtai Fund Investment Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as 'Shenzhen Hongtai') Co-investment, the establishment of Changzhou Red Shield Partnership (Limited Partnership) (hereinafter referred to as 'Changzhou Red Shield'), focusing on project investment in the field of integrated circuits. Among them, the amount of funds approved by Guoke Micro-Purchasing is 103 million yuan, accounting for 40.55% of the shares. The fund invested 150 million yuan.
In addition, Guoke Holdings, the holding company of Guoke Micro, plans to spend 10 billion yuan to build an integrated circuit eco-industrial park in Wujin High-tech Zone. Under the support of the National Fund for Changzhou IC industry, Guoke Holdings will also introduce its investment and shareholding. The chip company or eco-enterprise, led the establishment of the Trusted Computing Joint Lab and the Academician Workstation, and jointly established digital rights protection (DRM) R&D and testing centers to build a 4K content management and operation service industry base. (Proofreading/叨叨)
6. Ziguang Zhanrui 8908A chip was awarded GTI license;
In order to meet the actual needs of the industry chain and vertical industry, GTI test certification was established in 2017. It will promote TD-LTE evolution and global GM through the industry, and actively promote 5G development and cross-industry integration and innovation. Provide comprehensive and reliable product evaluation for the industry.
On the evening of June 26th, the 'GTI Night' event was successfully held in Shanghai. Representatives from around the world gathered at this event to conduct international industry exchanges and cooperation on the eve of the 2018 World Mobile Congress, witnessing the release of GTI's latest results. And share partner innovation products.
At this 'GTI Night' event, the Ziguang Zhanrui 8908A chip and other four chips won the GTI licensing certification, helping the NB-IoT industry to develop healthily.
Ziguang Zhanrui 8908A adopts 40nm process, single chip integrated central processing unit, modem, RF transceiver, power management, ROM and RAM storage unit, etc., to provide customers with the best cost-effective solution, suitable for general data modules, wearable devices And other products. And support 3GPP Release 14 protocol, with narrow-band IoT ultra-low power consumption, large capacity, super coverage, etc. The frequency range covers 690~2200MHz wide frequency band, which can be adapted to domestic and foreign carrier networks.
Ziguang Zhanrui has always been committed to the development of IoT chip products and solutions. At present, Ziguang Zhanrui IoT product line has fully covered NB-IoT, GSM/GPRS, CAT1, eMTC, etc., which can meet the needs of low-rate and medium-rate IoT. Technology. 5G will be fully commercialized around 2020. I believe that in the near future, the Internet of Things era will follow our 5G wave to us. Ziguang Zhanrui has sufficient confidence to seize the opportunity to do the 5G era, seize the Internet of Everything. Market opportunities, create a brilliant Chinese core.