Set micro-network news (text / Mao Mao), there are more and more Taiwan-funded enterprises landing or planning to land in mainland China's capital market. Following Foxconn and UMC, the global packaging and testing leading company ASE has recently revealed that it will go to the mainland , became the third Taiwanese semiconductor company to announce its entry into the A-share market this year.
Zhang Yusheng, chairman of the ASE Group, said in an interview with Taiwanese media that there are two ways for ASE to apply for listing on the mainland A-shares. One is to integrate many subsidiaries in the mainland into one, mainly through the Sunshine Group For the main body to buy other mainland subsidiaries; the other is to set up a new company in the mainland and then apply for listing.
According to industry insiders, Jiuwang.com, the listing of ASE on the mainland will be regulated by the China Securities Regulatory Commission. In the end, it is not certain which way to go through it. In addition, Zhang Yusheng also said that there is no exact time to go public. Table, you have to wait for the government's consent before there are more specific actions.
If ASE is really listed on the mainland, will it affect mainland mainland packaging and testing companies? In this regard, Dr. Daquan, CTO of Huatian Technology, said in an interview with Jiwei.com that it has raised more after the listing of ASE. Capital investment in research and development, expansion of market size, will certainly have an impact on local packaging and testing companies. However, it is still uncertain whether Sun Moonlight will be a Taiwan-funded enterprise or a mainland-based enterprise after listing, if its capital structure after listing is domestic capital For the Lord, it has to be another matter.
According to Ji Qingbin, an analyst of CITIC's electronic investment, in the short-term, after the listing of Sun Moonlight, it will directly compete with the mainland's domestic packaging and testing companies, and the geographical and talent advantages of mainland enterprises will be weakened; but in the long run, for the mainland The development of the industry is a good thing, and ASE is also facing the risk that technicians will be dug and the technology will be copied by mainland manufacturers.
'1+1>2'
In November last year, after the anti-monopoly review by relevant countries and institutions, the case of the merger of silicon and moon products, which was closely watched by the industry, finally settled. In April this year, ASE and silicon products were re-listed by Sun Moonlight Holdings Co., Ltd., and ASE And Silicone became a 100% shareholding subsidiary of the new investment holding company, operating independently.
Undoubtedly, after the merger, ASE and silicon products have expanded their global market share and competitive advantage. According to the data of Tuanbang Consulting's Tuoba Industrial Research Institute, the world's top 10 IC packaging and testing manufacturers in the first half of 2018 In the first half of 2018, Sun Moonlight ranked first with a market share of 19.5%, and silicon products ranked fourth with a market share of 10.0%. The combined market share of the two is 29.5%.
According to the collection micro-network, the current ASE has a total of three members of ASE, Silicon and Huanxu Electronics, of which ASE is a manufacturer of packaging and testing, and Xuxu Electronics is an electronics foundry.
It is worth mentioning that Huanxu Electronics is currently an A-share listed company and the first semiconductor company in Taiwan to be listed on the A-share market. Huanxu Electronics' revenue in 2017 reached 30 billion yuan, with a net profit of 1.314 billion yuan. Mainly engaged in the electronics industry module assembly, with ASE to make the system-level package (SiP) for Apple related chips, and then module assembly, and handed it to the assembly factory of Hon Hai and other foundries.
Build a perfect package and test layout in the mainland
For the mainland market, ASE and Silicon have also built a relatively complete layout of packaging and testing. Among them, ASE is a Taiwan-funded enterprise that laid out the mainland market earlier. In March 2002, ASE set up a packaging and testing material factory in Zhangjiang, Shanghai. Packaging and testing substrate manufacturing; In July 2004, ASE also invested in Kunshan and Shanghai to set up a subsidiary to produce optoelectronic modules and new electronic components.
At the end of October 2006, ASE was formally applied for investment in the Taiwan Regional Investment Review. The first step was to acquire Weiyu Technology, a mainland packaging and testing plant. In early 2007, ASE was officially acquired Weiyu Technology for US$60 million.
In order to further expand the packaging capacity in the mainland market, in September 2007, ASE purchased a 60% stake in NXP's packaging and testing plant in Suzhou, Sun Moon New Semiconductor. It is worth noting that in March this year, ASE was again at US$127 million. Acquired a 40% stake in Suzhou Riyue New Semiconductor held by NXP, so ASE has already held a 100% stake in Suzhou Riyue New Semiconductor.
Up to now, ASE has established production bases in Shanghai, Suzhou, Weihai, Kunshan and Wuxi through overseas investment companies. Jiuwang has reported that the total investment of ASE in the mainland market has reached 604 million US dollars, and the mainland's investment profit is also stable. Growth, 2015, 2016, 2017, the profit amount of $ 118 million, $ 283 million, $ 576 million.
In addition to ASE, the layout of silicon products in the mainland market is also very active. At the end of 2001, Silicon Products established Silicon Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. in Suzhou, and after the acquisition by ASE, in November 2017, silicon products sold silicon products. 30% equity of Suzhou Plant to Ziguang Group, the transaction amount is 1.026 billion yuan. At present, the silicon product Suzhou factory is not only Haisi's main packaging and testing foundry base, but also the purple light exhibition of the purple light group's IC design factory. Foundries.
In July 2017, Silicon Products established a 100% subsidiary in Fujian, Fujian Silicon Power Co., Ltd., focusing on the storage and measurement of memory and logic products. In April this year, due to the 12-inch plant built by Fujian Jinhua, the silicon product will be put into production. In Fujian, it invested 866 million Taiwan dollars to build a packaging and testing plant. At the same time, it cooperated with logic chip customers to provide packaging and testing capacity.
Zhang Yusheng, chairman of ASE Group, said that in the future, ASE will focus on the business opportunities of developing storage in the mainland. As the capacity of mainland storage continues to increase, it will expand.
In the past two years, it seems that Taiwanese companies have gone public on the market. At present, more and more Taiwan-funded enterprises are landing or planning to land in the capital market in mainland China. In June this year, Taiwan’s leading OEM company, Hon Hai, Foxconn Industrial Union (FLL) officially listed in the A-share market, from the disclosure of the prospectus to the ringing of the clock, lasted only 4 months; 20 days after the official listing of the Industrial Fulian, Taiwan's foundry foundry UMC announced that it will be The mainland subsidiaries and ships are the mainstays, and they are jointly listed in the A-share market; and ASE is the third Taiwanese semiconductor company to announce its entry into the A-share market this year.
In this regard, Wang Yanhui, secretary-general of the Mobile China Alliance, commented that the mainland government supports Taiwan-funded enterprises to go public on the mainland. However, given the importance of the integrated circuit industry to the upgrading of China's mainland industry, the government should also consider providing the same policy for the development of mainland domestic industries. (Proofreading / Hangsen)
2. Foreign investment in MediaTek Non-mobile phone chips are expected to maintain double-digit quarterly growth;
MediaTek said that it will be able to pay bright results in the last quarter. However, the recent report by foreign-funded legal entities has slammed the outlook for the second half of the year. This season's sports can be stagnant. US and Asian foreign investors have lowered their target prices. From 220 yuan to 339 yuan, I was shocked to see the 2 prefix, and the rating was lowered from 'holding' to 'selling'.
After the improvement of the gross profit margin of MediaTek in the 5th quarter, the third quarter of the terror is expected to be suspended. The foreign investment is expected to have similar gross profit margin this quarter, mainly due to competitors Qualcomm and Spreadtrum's pricing strategy for medium and low mobile phone chips. MediaTek's gross profit margin performance, and in the second quarter, mainland China's mobile phone brand customers in the middle and low-end models strong pull momentum, in this quarter turned conservative, before the 5G business, MediaTek still faces considerable pressure.
Foreign investment estimates, MediaTek's revenue this quarter increased by 10% to 15%, mobile phone and tablet mobile device chip shipments of about 110 million, compared with the original estimate of more than 120 million decline, mainly with Helio P60 and P22 Chip-based, but non-mobile phone chip parts, Internet of Things, smart speakers and other devices have a good growth, is expected to maintain double-digit quarterly increase.
US foreign investment is optimistic, future artificial intelligence, virtual reality, games and 5G applications can bring new life opportunities to MediaTek, which will stimulate a high growth period in the future. The sub-sector foreign investment believes that MediaTek’s operation will be feared before the next 5G road. Continued downturn, market share and gross margin growth stopped. Economic Daily
3. Exposure Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 has been mass-produced: 2019 flagship is correct!
According to the micro-network news, there are very few news about the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor. It is still unclear whether this processor will carry the 5G baseband. However, some people who broke the news pointed out that Qualcomm's next-generation flagship processor also It is the Snapdragon 855 processor has begun mass production, it is clear that the flagship mobile phone will be equipped with it in 2019.
According to the breaking news of Roland Quandt, Qualcomm has begun mass production of the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, which means that the processor has been designed and streamed, and should be tested in the fall for mobile phone manufacturers. However, some people said that due to the previous news leaks, Qualcomm's confidential work this time will be very strict, and the details of the current products are not exposed.
However, Qualcomm previously said that the mobile phone in the first half of 2019 will have 5G communication function, which means that this flagship processor is likely to be equipped with the latest 5G baseband, and according to the past rules, Samsung's flagship Galaxy S10/Plus next year. Will be equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor, is estimated to be the world's first.
At present, there is information about the Xiaomi mobile phone equipped with the Snapdragon 855 processor on Geekbench. However, from the current information, this running score may not be the actual running score of the Snapdragon 855. Roland Quandt said that this result shows The CPU ID is Snapdragon 835, and the running score is similar to 835. This test is only used for placeholders.
South Korean Industry Minister Paik Un-gyu visited Samsung (005930-KR) and SK Hynix (000660-KR) major semiconductor production lines on Monday (30th) and vowed to invest 1.5 trillion in the next 10 years. South Korea won ($1.34 billion) to strengthen the competitiveness of Korean semiconductors.
'In order to continue Korea as the world's top semiconductor giant, we will support the development of the chip industry with three strategies as the center,' Baiyun said during the visit.
The chip market is an important pillar of Korean industry. As the fourth largest economy in Asia, semiconductor chips account for about 20% of Korean exports.
Samsung is the world's largest manufacturer of memory chips, ranking first in DRAM and NAND, while SK Hynix ranks second and fifth in DRAM and NAND respectively. Baiyun said that Korean manufacturers have DRAM and NAND industries. Strong competitiveness, but has reached the limit and needs to develop new materials and equipment.
The Ministry of Industry said that it will cooperate with the science and information and communication technology departments to make the necessary investment in the Korean semiconductor industry. The government investment of 1.34 billion US dollars will be used to develop new semiconductor materials and devices, and make the country a global semiconductor hub. The three key points will be to develop memory chips, coordinate the mutual benefit of IC design plants and fabs, and attract global semiconductor materials and equipment manufacturers to establish production centers in Korea.
The first priority of China's 'Made in China 2025' program is to develop semiconductor technology, and the Chinese government has invested billions of dollars in the semiconductor industry. This has triggered concerns in South Korea. In addition, Chinese companies are actively looking for talent in South Korea. Get technical knowledge.
'The company's large-scale investment is the best way to revitalize the national economy and create jobs.' Minister Baiyun said in response to SK hynix's plan to establish a new production line in Icheon, southeast of Seoul. SK hynix said recently that it is expected to be 2020. Will invest 3.5 trillion won to set up a factory.
5. The industrial revitalization plan paves the way for the continuation of Moore's Law;
The US Department of Defense (DoE) is actively promoting a $2.2 billion 'Electronic Industry Revitalization Program' (ERI) program to support a wide range of electronics industry research. According to a spokesperson for the ERI Summit, Although Moore's Law has slowed down, the chip field will continue to evolve due to various alternatives to CMOS miniaturization.
In response to the two common challenges facing the industry – the decline of Moore's Law and the rise of China, it is expected that in the next five years, the United States will invest $1.5 billion in research projects for ERI.
Kristen Baldwin, deputy assistant secretary of systems engineering at the US Department of Defense, said: 'We hope to adjust the common needs of the industry to challenge China's expectations as the leader of the next-generation semiconductor industry. In addition, the US Department of Defense hopes to reverse the developments that threaten today's semiconductor ecosystem. At the same time, reduce the barriers of semiconductor technology. '
The White House proposed $2.2 billion to fund a five-year plan with four goals: to provide more funding for various research programs such as ERI, to establish joint innovation centers for military and commercial users, and to expand government revenues for reliable chips. Sources, as well as accelerated military modernization programs from areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) processors, precision navigation and clock chips to electronic warfare.
The US Department of Defense will announce its first chip innovation center in August, which will be used to create fast, secure chip designs. It is actively seeking new ways to ensure and validate reliable chip supply through 'storming broadly', 'promoting safety standards As a 'business' differentiation factor in the fields of data services and medical electronics'.
Currently, the US military lacks reliable 14nm (nm) process technology and 2.5D chip packaging sources, but these two technologies have been widely used in high-end commercial products.
William Chappell, who heads the ERI program at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), said: 'This is the first time that the Department of Defense has failed to acquire the latest technology since Bell Labs invented the transistor. This mechanism has been broken. We must combine them as soon as possible.'
A senior Intel executive said that the government has set too many restrictions on reliable sources that cannot ensure security, such as requiring all fab personnel to be US citizens. A manager at Globalfoundries pointed out At present, the 14nm process in the New York plant and Samsung (Samsung) are still entangled in some difficult business.
Mentor Graphics CEO Wally Rhines said that business users don't want to pay for the security features currently available to EDA vendors. 'It may take a while to change this situation.'
China is a global leader in the production of science and engineering graduates and doctoral degrees, but still lags behind the United States in citing technical papers. However, both Rhines and Chappell admit that the Chinese government has spent 10 billion in fostering the semiconductor industry. The dollar, this is beyond the reach of the US government.
In an interview, Rhines told Chappell: 'We have to perform tasks smarter and find the right questions, because we can never catch up with the huge investment capital of 'China', so we must do more work with existing resources.'
Looking at the future 'severe test' from the chip blueprint
Alphabet Chairman John Hennessy points out the issues that will be faced when designing future processors. He describes 'that is a very serious challenge'.
'The technology we are currently using is inherently inefficient and will continue to age over time. ' Hennessy details the end of Denard's miniature theory and the limitations of basic concepts such as cache memory. 'Who knows we have One day have to slow down the speed of the microprocessor or turn off the core so that it doesn't overheat it? This is something that no one would believe 10 years ago or 20 years ago.'
For example, he pointed out that engineers may be able to build a 96-core 4.9 GHz processor with a power consumption of 295W, but even in large data centers, they must try to eliminate a lot of heat. So, if you need to stay at 200W or more Low power consumption, maybe you can only afford 65 core or even lower core jobs.'
Hennessy calls for a new approach to hardware, software and design tools. 'More rapid execution and reinvention of the self is the only way forward.'
Specifically, he calls for dedicated processors for specific applications—that is, accelerators—to be developed jointly with the domain-specific languages and algorithms they serve. The graphics and neural network accelerators are the first new chips to gain kinetic energy. And added that they need to work with proprietary programming tools such as OpenGL (Drawing), TensorFlow (Deep Learning) and P4 (Communication).
In addition, 'we also need to make breakthroughs in design costs, just like in the 1980s and 1990s... we have achieved the ability to synthesize... Imagine that one day when completing a project, the time spent on hardware development is like software. The same as development.... '
Nvidia chief scientist Bill Dally agrees. He said: 'Moore's Law is dead, the accelerator is the future!' He exemplifies the efficiency of designing an accelerator for gene sequencing, and Nvidia's latest GPU – now included A tensor core of a multi-product array that can be used to accelerate deep learning tasks.
Often, the design should map the workload to the hardware first, and pay attention to issues such as the location of the data. He adds that the hardware should use a series of accelerator blocks to accomplish specific tasks.
Intel's chief technologist, Mike Mayberry, gave Moore's Law a more precise metaphor in another keynote speech. 'Moore's Law is about a lower cost per feature integration, and it's still going on -- but we can't use it anymore Technology to achieve this goal. 'He refers to new materials, components and packaging methods. He describes a general-purpose processor such as x86 as the ocean, and the accelerator is 'the island must be large enough' to be The technology derived brings life.
Reinvest heavily in advanced research and development programs
DARPA announced more than $320 million in sponsorship for more than 40 research projects at the event, many of which are relatively small university research programs. But overall, industry executives are optimistic about these research projects, but some point out They need to speed up their actions in order to get more money and more clearly how the results lead to the path of commercialization.
The 3DSoC program received a maximum of approximately $61 million to develop a way to build faster components—a method that allows component speeds to be 50 times faster than today's 7nm wafer line production 2.5D stack. The research team will try Integrating Stanford University's low-temperature carbon nanotube FETs with non-volatile resistive RAM memory developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on wafers using 90nm from the Skyworks Minnesota fab Process manufacturing.
If successful, they will deliver significant component yields – combined with a reusable process design kit and Georgia Tech's EDA process. But the biggest challenge is to keep the upper components 400 in a CMOS-compatible process. Below °C, which includes an annealing step of 1000 °C.
Another program, called FRANC, focuses on creating a new generation of memory that is faster and more dense than existing embedded SRAMs and DRAMs. They will be used in neural network processor versions.
The University of Illinois, Globalfoundries and Raytheon Missile Systems will receive $8.3 million to jointly develop MRAM-based processors; Applied Materials will work with Arm to conduct a $6.7 million RAM Related plans; and HRL Labs also received $3.4 million for the development of memristor-based chips.
Steve Pawlowski, vice president of advanced computing at Micron, said, 'Today's memory technologies were developed in the 1960s and 1970s—they need to evolve over time.' So the company is working on a system-level approach. Package (SiP) DRAM plan.
'Starting a DRAM cell requires 1.25 picojoules per bit of power, and that number is no longer reduced -- it has reached the bottom line.' He added that Micron has studied a variety of fused memory and computational Pathway, including adding intelligence to the sense amplifier.
Nvidia has secured $22.7 million in funding for software-defined hardware. The goal of the program is to define reconfigurable arrays that can operate on dense or sparse matrices.
Intel and Qualcomm received $4.5 million and $2 million, respectively, to actively build reconfigurable processor technology. Systems and Technology Research received $5.5 million for the development of data-based just-in-time compilers.
Another plan is to provide a low-power accelerator SoC, which is roughly divided into two main projects. Arizona State received $17.4 million to develop a software-defined radio chip with Arm. IBM received 14.7 million US dollar, a method for defining a programming accelerator for autonomous vehicles.
Programming complexity has plagued front-end, highly parallel chips. DARPA program manager Tom Rondeau used IBM's Cell microprocessor architecture in an early software-defined radio program. He said that this multi-core chip 'were excited ...but 'because of the lack of tools' we spent a long time figuring out how to use... and when the problem is solved, Intel has developed a new processor, but we also know Their tools. '
DARPA has released two EDA-related programs at the Design Automation Conference (DAC). Cadence received the highest $24.1 million in machine learning design for automatic layout generators for analog, package and board.
Arm, UC San Diego and Qualcomm will participate in a $11.3 million program to use machine learning to design an open source automatic layout generator for digital chips. The University of Minnesota received 530. Ten thousand dollars, used to design similar analog circuit tools.
DARPA also introduced the latest developments in several upcoming semiconductor research programs and said it will release some new programs and their results this fall.
Compile: Susan Hong eettaiwan
(Reference: Moore's Law, China vs. Team USA, by Rick Merritt)
6. Accelerate the layout of the Internet of Things, and send Arm $600 million to acquire data analysis company Treasure Data;
According to Bloomberg News, informed sources said that Softbank's British chip designer Arm has agreed to acquire US data analysis company Treasure Data, the transaction price is about 600 million US dollars.
An Arm spokesperson declined to comment. The Treasure Data spokesperson has yet to respond.
Softbank bought Arm for $32 billion in 2016, and Sun Justice, the company's CEO, said that the areas of investment they are currently interested in include artificial intelligence, driverless cars, the Internet of Things, robots and online cars. Softbank announced about 34 billion last year. The US dollar trade is currently investing in the technology industry through its Vision Fund, which is close to $100 billion.
Treasure Data raised $25 million at the end of 2016, when it was supported by Sierra Ventures and SBI, which was a subsidiary of Softbank.
Products developed by Treasure Data, based in Mountain View, Calif., can help companies analyze data for marketing and other purposes, including processing data that is proliferating after product release, or unified data provided by sensors. The company's products are used In the automotive, retail, Internet of Things, entertainment and other industries, their customer data platform can also help users compete with data giants such as Netflix, Amazon and Facebook.
The acquisition is part of the Arm IoT development plan. Last month, Arm just acquired Stream Technologies to provide better connectivity for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
The benefits of data are often obvious: higher efficiency, faster market entry speed, cost savings, and new revenue channels. But the premise of these benefits is that the data must be reliable, secure, and Quick access and meaningful data conclusions.
Arm's vision is to achieve 1 trillion devices networking in 2035, which requires a number of factors, including the opportunity for companies to get real business value from IoT data. The benefits of using this data are obvious: Higher efficiency , shorter time-to-market, cost savings, and new sources of revenue. The benefits of having this data are ultimately to ensure the credibility of the data you get, to securely and quickly capture data and provide meaningful insights. .