The 'Zhongxing Incident' ended on July 14 with ZTE paying a deposit of 400 million U.S. dollars and paying a fine of 1 billion U.S. dollars. This incident not only exposed many problems of ZTE, but also directly pushed China’s lack of 'core' problems to the forefront. A great discussion of the Chinese 'core'.
From technology to market, China's semiconductor industry is everywhere 'core' pain
China's semiconductor industry has played an increasingly important role in the international market in recent years. In 2017, the domestic semiconductor market reached 1,688.6 billion yuan, and the compound growth rate in 2010-2017 was 10.32%, much higher than the global semiconductor industry's 2.37% average growth rate. , becoming an important driving engine for the global semiconductor market. Although China's semiconductor surface is a thriving image, China's semiconductor lacks core technology, and the lack of 'core' has always been a heart disease that has plagued China's semiconductor industry. This year's 'Zhongxing incident' has been completely removed. The final fig leaf has unveiled several major problems in the Chinese semiconductor industry.
Problem 1: Can't design and produce chips independently. The Chinese market accounts for more than 50% of the global chip market, but it costs 300 billion US dollars to import chips every year, which is more than double the amount of crude oil imported in the second place. The root cause of the asymmetrical situation is that China cannot independently produce and design chips. At present, it is only a chip power rather than a chip power.
In the field of chip production, although Chinese companies can produce chips, the tools and manufacturing processes for producing chips are monopolized by several foreign companies. The number of Chinese companies that can master chip production tool technology is almost zero. For example, production chips cannot be separated from 'lithography. Machine', and high-end lithography machine is precisely the most sophisticated equipment, known as 'the flower of modern optical industry'. In today's world, there are only a handful of countries that can produce lithography machines, only a few in the Netherlands, the United States, Japan, etc. Countries. The ASML company in the Netherlands is the absolute leader. Its lithography machine accounts for about 80% of the global market. Its 28nm lithography machine has already achieved commercial production and is entering the 7nm. The highest precision is only the 90nm lithography machine of Shanghai Microelectronics, the gap is more than 10 years.
In the field of chip design, the situation in the production field has improved. The Chinese companies in various fields have been involved. In addition to the weak design of high-end chips, other fields have opened up some markets. But the design of chips is inseparable from the chip architecture. China's current chip architecture does not have independent intellectual property rights. The chip design mainly uses the public version architectures such as ARM and X86. Therefore, in the strict sense, Chinese chip companies do not have the ability to design and manufacture chips independently.
Problem 2: Most chip companies are just chip foundries. Most of China's chip companies are currently in the middle and lower reaches of the chip industry, mainly engaged in chip production. In 2017, half of the top 10 companies in China's listed chip companies are chip agent manufacturers. Such as the famous 'SMIC', SMIC was established in Shanghai in 2000. It is one of the world's leading integrated circuit chip foundries and the largest and most technologically advanced integrated circuit chip manufacturer in China. The profit margin is only 4% lower, which is downstream of the chip production process.
Problem 3: The chip industry structure is unreasonable. The development of China's chip industry is extremely unbalanced. In the high-end chip field, there are no other domestic chips except Heisin Kirin; and the lower-end chip field is only Spreadtrum, Cambrian With a small number of enterprises supporting the market, most Chinese chip companies are still stuck in the production of low-end chips, which leads to the unreasonable structure of China's chip industry, which is not conducive to the healthy development of China's chip industry.
What is the cause of the 'core' pain in China's semiconductor industry?
As a strategic industry that affects social, economic and national security security and comprehensive competitiveness, the chip industry has always been the key development target of major powers, but China, as a chip power, is subject to people in the chip field, resulting in China's lack of 'core'. What are the reasons?
The root cause is the lack of talent. The development of any industry is inseparable from the promotion of talents. Talents are the core of industry and company development. According to the “China IC Industry Talent White Paper (2016-2017)” released in May 2017, China's current chip industry demand for talents is as high as 700,000, while China's current chip industry employs only 300,000 people, and the talent gap is nearly 400,000. There are many reasons for the serious shortage of talents, but there are two main points.
First, the domestic chip industry has relatively low salary and serious brain drain. According to the Wuhan Talent Exchange Center, the salary of domestic chip practitioners generally does not exceed 300,000 yuan, while the annual salary of foreign counterparts averages over 600,000 yuan. There is a salary gap between them. The reason why there are a lot of talents in domestic Internet companies and artificial intelligence is because the salary is very high. For example, the monthly salary of Alibaba Group with 3 to 5 years of work experience can reach more than 40,000, and The actual wages are higher than 12 months, so the annual salary of such talents is as high as 500,000 or more. However, the chip industry is not proportional to the salary of the Internet enterprise and the artificial intelligence industry, so it is difficult to introduce talents and retain talents.
Second, the talents cultivated by domestic universities are not in line with the talents required by enterprises. According to industry insiders, there is a phenomenon that talents training and enterprise demand do not match supply and demand. The reason why talents do not fit is the barriers of university disciplines, and chip research and development. It is not a separate subject. It requires relevant personnel to master the knowledge of physics, materials science, computer science, etc., and needs complex innovative talents.
The internal reason is that insufficient capital investment leads to backward manufacturing and design process. Looking at the history of chip development in today's world chip powers, it is not difficult to find that countries such as the United States, Japan, South Korea and Europe, which are absolutely dominant in the market, are all national when the chip starts. Force, let the government directly intervene to help its development.
In the early days of China's chip development, the government also invested a lot of resources to support the development of chips. However, after several failures, it gradually gave up large-scale support to the chip industry. When domestic chip products were still not commercially available, they lost a lot of government support. Many Enterprises quickly fall, and the remaining companies such as Lianxin Technology are only able to commercialize in the low-end market, barely maintain the company's operations, and cannot introduce or develop more advanced manufacturing processes and chip designs in case of insufficient funds. In the end, it leads to far behind other chips in the chip field.
The external reason is the foreign technology blockade. The Chinese chip industry started late, the chip manufacturing and design field is almost blank, and it is urgent to learn advanced foreign chip technology, but the United States has signed the notorious "Washna Agreement" with several countries. Implementing a technical blockade against China, prohibiting the transfer of technology within three generations in any way.
Although the Chinese nation has been constantly striving for self-improvement, it has created two bombs and one star under the technical blockade, but it has to be acknowledged that the foreign technology blockade in the Chinese chip field has indeed slowed down the pace of the development of China's chip industry. Nowadays, the development of the exhibition has been difficult and slow. In the low-end chip field, it is already the dominance of the overlord, and it is becoming more and more full in the middle and high-end. It has caused Qualcomm's pursuit of interception. Qualcomm intends to cooperate with Lianxin Technology to form a subsidiary to attack the exhibition. The development of China Core is not only a foreign technology blockade, There are also foreign companies chasing and intercepting, the survival and development space is grim.
The right medicine can make the 'core' disease both cure the symptoms and cure the disease.
ZTE’s banned incident has sounded the alarm for us. Although China’s chip industry faces many problems, we must be more painful and challenge the “core” disease in China’s semiconductor industry. Symptomatic drugs can do more with less, China’s current chip industry issues Can also be solved from the following three aspects.
Actively introducing and cultivating talents is the cure for the law. The fundamental reason for the slow development of China's chip industry is the lack of talents. The talent gap in China's chip industry is as high as 400,000. To solve or alleviate the lack of talents, it is necessary to use open source and reduce expenditure.
Open source: There are two main ways to solve the problem of talent shortage from the perspective of open source. First, actively introducing talents, like the large amount of foreign investment introduced in the early stage of China's reform and opening up, can quickly and effectively alleviate the shortage of talents in the chip industry. Let the Chinese chip industry take it to the next level.
The second is to vigorously cultivate relevant talents. The focus of open source and expenditure is on open source. The key to solving the shortage of talents lies in the cultivation of talents. Training talents not only requires colleges and universities to attach importance to the cultivation of chip talents, expand the enrollment scale, adjust the disciplines to break the barriers of disciplines, but also need relevant national policies. Chip education leaning.
Throttling: Resolving talent shortage not only needs to solve how to recruit talents, but more importantly, how to retain talents and reduce the loss of talents. Reducing brain drain can also start from two aspects. First, increase the actual income of practitioners. Solve the worries of talents in life; Second, improve the welfare of practitioners, and let people feel happiness.
Solving the problem of funding provides the impetus for development. Chinese chip companies are currently small in scale, lack of anti-risk ability and market competitiveness. The R&D investment of the chip industry needs to continue to invest huge amounts of money, which is likely to cause difficulties in corporate capital turnover.
To solve the problem of insufficient funds for enterprises, it is necessary for all sectors of the society to continue to invest a lot of money in chip companies. Enterprises can solve the problem of funding for R&D in order to carry out research and development wholeheartedly. After the outbreak of 'Zhongxing Incidents' this year, many technology giants have also invested heavily to support the development of China's chip industry. Alibaba not only acquired several chip companies, but also used huge funds to set up a chip research institute. It not only solved the funding problem for chip companies, but also gave the chip industry a boost.
'Core' disease also needs 'new' medicine, using innovative driving chip development. Chinese chip companies to be bigger and stronger, to solve the lack of 'core' can not be separated from technological innovation and management innovation, technological innovation and management innovation complement each other Technology and management innovation can not be done overnight. It requires the government and chip companies to continue to invest a lot of resources, starting from the most basic and low-level chip production tools, production processes, chip architecture and chip IC design, and then promote The company's R&D team manages innovation and establishes scientific and efficient R&D, production and management mechanisms.
summary
The ZTE incident made us clearly understand that although China's semiconductor industry is full of vitality, it hides an involuntary 'core' in a seemingly healthy industry. We should know more clearly after the 'core' pain. To the gap with foreign advanced technology, after painstaking thoughts, we should narrow down or even surpass competitors by cultivating talents and innovations, and build China from a chip power into a chip power to solve the 'core' disease in China's semiconductor industry.