1. Broadcom IPO will suspend voting, and the capitalization of A-shares of mainland IC companies still faces policy levels;
Set micro-network news (text / Xiaobei) Today, Broadcom Integrated Circuits (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as 'Broadcom Integration'), IPO will suspend voting. Collected micro-network exclusive information, the reason for the suspension is the Securities and Futures Commission members on Broadcom The integrated financial data needs to be more understood. This also reflects that mainland IC companies still face a lot of policy levels in the A-share capitalization.
In fact, Botong's integrated IPO application attracted nearly 30 investment institutions to compete in, and there are many well-known listed companies, large national institutions.
Broadcom integrated in September last year, submitted a prospectus to the China Securities Regulatory Commission; in March this year, Broadcom Integrated Circuits (Shanghai) received feedback from the CSRC; on May 18, Broadcom integrated the prospectus on the website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Issued 3,467,840 shares, the total share capital after the issuance was 139 million shares, the public development accounted for 25%, the sponsor institution was CITIC Securities, the planned IPO raised funds of 671 million yuan, and used for multiple product development and upgrading projects.
Shanghai Broadcom raised about 671 million yuan of IPO plan, of which 123 million yuan was used for standard protocol wireless interconnection product technology upgrade project, 0.98 billion yuan for national standard ETC product technology upgrade project, and 409 million yuan for satellite positioning product development and Industrialization project, 1.27 billion yuan for smart home entrance product research and development and industrialization projects, 2.74 billion yuan for R & D center construction projects.
Let's take a look at why Broadcom's integrated IPO has attracted so many organizations to compete.
The leader in wireless RF chip design, the world's first ETC chip maker
From the name, many people think that Broadcom integration has a close relationship with Broadcom. In fact, it is not related.
Broadcom Integration was established on December 1, 2004, and changed to a joint-stock company on March 20, 2017. It is headquartered in Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park in Pudong New Area, Shanghai. It is a wireless communication integrated circuit chip (divided into wireless data transmission chips and Wireless audio chip two major categories) R & D and sales of chip design companies, products include 5.8G products, WiFi products, Bluetooth digital transmission, general wireless, walkie-talkie, broadcast transceiver, Bluetooth audio, wireless microphone, etc., and in Bluetooth Speakers, wireless keyboard and mouse, game controllers, wireless microphones, car ETC units and other terminal fields have been widely used.
Broadcom integrated digital chip products customers include Jin Yi Technology (ETC equipment), Laibo Technology (wireless keyboard, mouse), Dajiang Technology (UAV); audio chip products customers include LG, Sharp, Philips, etc.
Chairman Pengfei Zhang (real controller) is a 1965 person, Dr. Tsinghua, postdoctoral fellow of the University of California, Los Angeles, US nationality. In 2005, he returned to China to start a business and established Broadcom integration, and has been the chairman and general manager of Broadcom Integration. Get paid at the company.
Beken BVI is the controlling shareholder of Broadcom Integration, which directly holds 29.1633% of the shares of Broadcom, but has no actual operation. Pengfei Zhang, DaweiGuo is the actual controller of Broadcom, and indirectly holds 24.01% of the shares of Broadcom through Beken BVI. Zhou, Xu Boxiong, Wenjie Xu is the concerted action of Broadcom's integrated actual controller, which controls 42.83% of the total equity.
Broadcom integration was the second venture of Pengfei Zhang. Prior to this, he founded an IC design company in Silicon Valley, USA. It was acquired by a US listed company for $130 million a few years after its founding. It is reported that the first after the establishment of Broadcom integration. One product, which is in cooperation with VTech, the world's largest cordless telephone supplier, and completed the industry's most integrated cordless phone chip in more than half a year. Although there were some twists and turns, it finally won. VTech's order. In addition, Broadcom has also developed the world's first ETC chip.
Today, Broadcom integrates technology in China's wireless RF chip design industry with leading technology. It has 26 and 39 patents granted in China and the United States, covering key areas such as energy consumption, noise reduction, filtering, and wake-up in the wireless RF field. 70 circuit layout design, is one of the major suppliers of dedicated walkie-talkie, Bluetooth mouse and other chips at home and abroad.
It is worth noting that Broadcom's integration in R&D is very large. From 2015 to 2017, its R&D expenses were 53.285 million yuan, 64.848 million yuan and 690.9998 million yuan, accounting for 76.04% and 72.79% respectively. 82.05%.
In addition, from 2015 to 2017, Broadcom's integrated operating income was 444 million yuan, 524 million yuan and 565 million yuan respectively, and the net profit for the same period was 9384.37 million yuan, 104.21 million yuan and 87.427 million yuan. It is reported that Broadcom integrates the top five customers. (Shenzhen Core SMIC, Shenzhen Boxin, Shenzhen Hongkete Electronics, Shenzhen Weiweide Technology and Shenzhen Jixian Technology), accounting for 82.16% of its total sales in 2017.
Future layout: Becoming a leader in the domestic IC design industry
Broadcom integration pointed out in the prospectus that the future will be based on the existing technology accumulation and market resources, giving full play to the company's product range, application program improvement, fast response and other advantages, to maximize the value of the brand, and layout of intelligent transportation, intelligence Home, smart wear and other IoT markets, further consolidating the company's leading position in the market and technology.
The goal of Broadcom integration in the next three years is to further enhance its competitive edge in the field of wireless transmission and wireless audio chip products, and become the leader in the domestic IC design industry. Broadcom integration will improve and continuously improve new products by developing advanced technologies. Added value, maintain product competitiveness, and actively expand overseas markets, expand the world's first-class customer base, and gain more market share.
At the same time, Broadcom integration will enrich its product line. The prospectus pointed out that both smart terminal products and satellite positioning terminal products are currently in a relatively early stage of development, and first developed intelligent port chips and satellite positioning chips to meet market demand. It will help enterprises to take the lead in grabbing market share. These two types of products will further enrich the company's product line and ensure the company's performance continues to grow steadily.
Botong suspends voting to show that the CSRC still has no loosening of the listing of local IC companies?
In the previous series of special reports on the development of China's IC industry, the China Securities Industry has pointed out that in recent years, the CSRC has adopted different policies on the listing of Taiwan IC companies and mainland IC companies. The policy is bright green; while the mainland IC industry is treated with strict policy thresholds. This policy bias will lead to the inability of mainland IC companies to obtain fair competition with Taiwan IC companies, and will seriously hinder the development of the mainland IC industry.
On the one hand, Taiwan IC companies enjoy preferential policies on listing in the mainland. For example, the time period from the application of Taiwanese companies to the A-share listing to the specific review has been reduced from the previous three years to more than one year. I am eager to try, I hope to gain more capital, open the mainland market and talent advantage.
In contrast, mainland IC companies have encountered policy priorities in the capitalization of A-shares. In the past few years, there have been few successful cases of re-capitalization of Chinese semiconductor mergers and acquisitions.
The integration of Broadcom's integration has further highlighted the stringent national policy for local ICs. Here, Jiwei.com calls on the state to pay more attention to the development of the integrated circuit industry. It is hoped that cooperation among multiple departments will be achieved to achieve consistency in supporting policies. And coherence, so that mainland IC companies can at least enjoy the same policy treatment as Taiwan IC companies. At the same time, they will pay more attention and considerations on policies around the capital level, promote the development of China's IC industry capital market, and enable IC companies to Realize the 'hematopoietic' ability of the capital market with the power of the capital market. (Proofreading / Yuechuan)
2. The Yangtze River Storage opens a new 3D NAND architecture, and the application products are expected to be mass-produced in 2019;
According to the micro-network news, today's Yangtze River Storage officially announced its breakthrough technology - XtackingTM. It is reported that this technology will bring unprecedented I / O performance, higher storage density, and shorter product launch for 3D NAND flash memory. Cycle. At the same time, the technology can be applied to smart phones, personal computing, data centers and enterprise applications, and will open a new chapter in high-performance, customized NAND solutions.
At present, Changjiang Storage has successfully applied Xtacking TM technology to the development of its second-generation 3D NAND products, which are expected to enter mass production in 2019.
According to Changjiang Storage, XtackingTM can be used to independently process peripheral circuits responsible for data I/O and memory cell operations on a single wafer. This processing method facilitates the selection of appropriate advanced logic processes to allow NAND to obtain higher I. /O interface speed and more operational functions. The memory unit will also be processed independently on another wafer. When the two wafers are completed, the innovative XtackingTM technology can pass millions of processes in a single processing step. The core inter-connector VIA (Vertical Interconnect Accesses) connects the two to the circuit and adds only a limited cost.
In the traditional 3D NAND architecture, the peripheral circuit accounts for about 20~30% of the chip area, which reduces the storage density of the chip. As the 3D NAND technology is stacked to 128 layers or higher, the peripheral circuit may account for 50% of the total chip area. Above. XtackingTM technology places peripheral circuits on top of memory cells to achieve higher storage density than traditional 3D NAND.
XtackingTM technology leverages the independent processing advantages of memory cells and peripheral circuits to enable parallel, modular product design and manufacturing, with a three-month reduction in product development time and a 20% reduction in production cycles, dramatically reducing 3D NAND products. Time to market. In addition, this modular approach also opens the door to introducing innovative features of NAND peripheral circuits to enable customization of NAND flash memory.
Gregory Wong, founder and principal analyst of Forward Insights, a well-known market research firm in the field of flash and solid-state drives, believes that with the upgrade of 3D NAND, the performance of the same capacity SSD will be maintained or improved after the storage capacity of a single NAND chip is greatly increased. It will become more and more difficult. To drive the SSD performance to continue to improve, faster NAND I/O speed and multi-plane parallel operation will be necessary.
In addition, Dr. Yang Shining, CEO of Changjiang Storage, said that the world's fastest 3D NAND I/O speed target is 1.4Gbps, and most NAND suppliers can only supply 1.0 Gbps or lower. Using XtackingTM technology is expected Significantly increase NAND I/O speed to 3.0Gbps, which is comparable to DRAM DDR4 I/O speed. This will be subversive for the NAND industry.
It is worth mentioning that Qi Shijing, co-president of Ziguang Group, recently revealed that China's first 32-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips with independent intellectual property rights will be mass-produced in the fourth quarter of this year. Meanwhile, Shi Shijing said that at present, chip production equipment is in progress. Installation and commissioning, in the fourth quarter of this year, 32-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips will be mass-produced in the No. 1 chip production plant. In addition, 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory chip development is also in full swing, planned to achieve mass production in 2019.
3. The entrance is the first. Commercial is the king, and the AI chip is the hottest land company Huawei for the exclusive analysis of Ruixin Micro Strategy;
Among the many types of chips, AI chips that focus on artificial intelligence applications are veritable 'winds' – whether it is technology giants or start-ups, chip makers or Internet companies, they are actively deploying this field.
Internet companies represented by BAT have no deep family in the chip industry, but relying on abundant funds, cutting-edge talents and massive data, the pace is not slow. Following the announcement of the Alibaba Institute in April this year, it is being applied to the image. Video analysis, machine learning, cost-effective is the same as the product 40 times the neural network chip Ali-NPU; Baidu officially launched in July at the AI developer conference focused on natural language processing, image recognition, automatic driving and other applications China's first cloud full-featured AI chip 'Kunlun.
The AI chips are hot, and start-ups are equally enthusiastic. The Horizon launched in 2015 has launched the Journey series of processors for smart driving and the Sunrise series of processors for smart cameras. Founded in 2016. In Cambrian in May this year, the third-generation machine learning terminal processor 1M using 7nm technology was released in Shanghai, and its performance was 10 times higher than the previously released Cambrian 1A.
First-line chip companies have already laid out in-depth layouts in the AI field. Even on CES 2018, Rockchip has released its first AI processor RK3399Pro, which is the first to adopt CPU+GPU+NPU hardware structure design. Its on-chip NPU performance is as high as 2.4. TOPs, with high performance, low power consumption, development and other advantages; In March of the same year, Taiwanese chip maker MediaTek released the first built-in AI-capable chip P60, built-in APU dedicated to AI operation, can provide Getting started to advanced full API support and developer toolkit.
AI chip vents, what kind of characteristics of the enterprise can catch and fly?
In the past few years, the smart interconnected device has been booming. Smart speakers are typical representatives of the consumer sector. According to data from market research firm Canalys, the global shipment of smart speakers in the first quarter of this year reached 9 million units, a 210% increase over the same period last year. Smart cameras are typical in the industrial field. Representatives, there are currently about 176 million surveillance cameras in China, and the number is expected to increase to 626 million in three years. At the same time as the number of explosions, the requirements for cameras are getting higher and higher, and they are looking from 'visible' to 'seeing Understand the 'transformation, which requires the camera to be more 'smart'. Obviously, these new types of smart connected devices need to be processed in natural language, image recognition as a representative of deep learning technology as a support, thus the brain of the device - the chip is in the calculation New requirements have been put forward in terms of power and power consumption. It is just like the mapping work will be given to the GPU instead of the CPU. As early as 2011, The song found that if each user uses 3 minutes of Google's voice search service based on deep learning speech recognition model every day, it must double the existing data center. This means that the existing CPU and GPU can not meet Demand, which drives Google's own development of more efficient AI chips - NPU. The heat of AI chips is based on the idea that the right architecture to do the right job can achieve higher efficiency and lower efficiency. Consumption. The chip dedicated to artificial intelligence and the traditional computing chip are very different - the typical CPU architecture requires a lot of space to place the storage unit and the control unit, compared to the computing unit only occupy a small part The computational power cannot meet the computational requirements of deep neural networks (DNN); while the AI chip has a large number of computational units that can be adapted to the needs of massively parallel computing.
Since so many companies are deploying AI chips, what is the performance of the various AI chips developed?
Not long ago, market research firm Compass Intelligence released the global AI chip company ranking. Compass Intelligence calculated this result from four dimensions: company performance, product performance, market performance, and unique market.
In the top 20 AI chip companies in the world, China has two seats, namely Huawei and Ruixinwei. Let's take a look at the reasons for the list from their product layout and ecological chain strategy.
Huawei AI chip layout - to seize the mobile phone interactive portal AI chip wants to shine, must have a carrier carrying the chip, Huawei did not hesitate to choose a very large mobile phone as an entry point. September 2017, Huawei in Germany The latest AI chip 'Kirin 970' was officially launched at the International Consumer Electronics Show (IFA) in Berlin. Kirin 970 integrated NPU dedicated hardware processing unit (Cambrian IP), innovatively designed HiAI mobile computing architecture, its AI Performance density is much better than CPU and GPU. In October, Huawei released the new flagship mobile phone Mate 10 equipped with Kirin 970 in Munich, Germany. The main selling point is artificial intelligence. The new NPU architecture allows Huawei mobile phones to handle the same AI tasks. , got 50 times energy efficiency and 25 times performance improvement.
Ruixinwei's AI chip layout - commercial is founded in 2001. Ruixin Microelectronics is a professional integrated circuit design company, which has been a smart phone, tablet, communication tablet, TV set-top box, car navigation, IoT Internet of Things and multimedia. Audio and video products provide professional chip solutions.
Because of its historical origins and its own advantages, Ruixin Micro's AI chip strategy is different from that of Huawei. It directly targets the booming IoT market and has launched a series of AI chip products and applications; but similar to Huawei. The point is that these products are not samples in the laboratory, but are all-round, mass-produced and commercially available in a variety of applications.
Typical, such as Rockchip Micro, has released four 'AI artificial intelligence sweeping robots' chip-level solutions to the industry: RK3399, RV1108, RK3326 and RK3308, supporting functions from AI to VSLAM and laser navigation, covering from high-end to entry Level sweeping robot products, help define and upgrade the standards of the fourth generation AI artificial intelligence sweeping robot positioning navigation. Ruixinwei has many algorithm partners and ODM/OEM customers in the sweeping robot ecology, covering laser, VSLAM, AI In the same direction, it can achieve rapid mass production.
The voice interaction solution is also an important part of the Rockchip AI chip strategy. At last year's Google I/O Developers Conference, Rockchip Micro first released the RK3229 Google Voice Assistant solution based on the Andorid system platform to the world. Using quad-core Cortex-A7 core architecture, combined with Google's deep technical accumulation in the audio field, support for sound source localization, sound source enhancement, echo cancellation, noise suppression, etc. In addition, Ruixinwei also supports Baidu voice assistant. RK3308 and RK3326 and other products.
In addition to video, voice and other solutions, Ruixin Micro has made achievements in the field of visual processing and image recognition. In 2016, Ruixin Micro officially released the 'Smart Vision Development Platform-RK1108, which realizes energy-efficient intelligent vision in embedded systems. And the revolutionary evolution of image perception. The newly released RK1608 vision processing chip demonstrates a very strong 3D vision-related basic capabilities - such as deep color technology to help people replace natural gestures and body control Complex remote control and buttons; for example, human bone tracking technology can achieve precise positioning and tracking of pedestrians through machine learning algorithms and post-tracking detection technology.
These differently positioned AI chips from Ruixin Micro actually cover all current application scenarios and product forms of AI.
In the era of great changes in AI chips, there are always a large number of followers coming in. Not only Chinese start-ups, Intel, Qualcomm and other foreign chip giants have begun to transform into AI chips; Internet giant Google, new energy automotive technology company Tesla, social Facebook, the originator of the Internet, has also begun to get involved in chips. For a time, AI chips ushered in the competition.
It is worth noting that many domestic and foreign AI chips are still in the stage of laboratory data. More is a good time, but there is a long way to go from the real commercial distance. And this is exactly It is the reason why China's core enterprises Huawei and Ruixin Micropower have ranked 'the top 20 AI chip companies in the world'. When competitors are still in the stage of 'paper talks', they have used advanced ecological chain layout and large-scale commercial use. AI products are at the forefront.
4. The pursuit of the domestic chip research and development veterans in the eyes;
Editor's note:
Whether it is a product or a city, the brand is always the most recognizable symbol. 'Product' is to have high quality and good quality; 'brand' is to be competitive and influence. Strive to become a global city and society of excellence The international metropolis, the 'four big brands' is exactly the layout of Shanghai, which is based on the current and profound. In this context, the Morning News interviewed more than ten people from all walks of life to enhance the city's attractiveness and creativity. , competitive practitioners. In them, we see that improving Shanghai's urban energy level and core competitiveness, both long-term preparations and determinations to fight for the day. Soundproof room, analog radio, aging test Room... On the sides of a long corridor, there are more than a dozen large and small laboratories. After a small 'test', a small chip will show the 'Chinese core' for this era. speed.
Seventeen years ago, the domestic integrated circuit industry had just started, and there were only a handful of chip companies, but the fertile soil of Shanghai's rapid development attracted a group of scientific and technological talents.
Yin Botao, with his desire for high technology, came to Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, switching between circuit diagrams and codes every day, and began to use the computer to describe the 'core' future.
From one room to the world, in a blink of an eye
In 2001, 24-year-old Yin Botao joined the predecessor of Ziguang Zhanrui - Spreadtrum Communications. At that time, Spreadtrum Communications was just established three months ago. The company has a total of 67 employees, half of whom are in the United States, and half of which are in Zhangjiang, Shanghai. In the small building.
At that time, the domestic integrated circuit industry had just started, and there were only a handful of chip companies. However, the fertile soil of Shanghai’s rapid development attracted a group of scientific and technological talents. 'I saw many communication companies at the time, including some companies in Europe and America, often Customer support, service class, no core research and development, Spreadtrum is the only company I can access the core technology of communication chip. At the time I just graduated, it was very important for me to learn advanced technology. 'Yin Botao The introduction said.
The initial office location of Spreadtrum was a room of sixty or seventy flats with several large tables, four or fifty computers on the table, and some measuring circuits and equipment for welding. What impressed Yin Botao was At the time, the boss and the staff were sitting together and there was no separate office.
Two or three years later, they changed from a room to a small building next to it, and then changed to a building in Zhangjiang's landmark. After more than a decade of development, Ziguang Zhan Rui already has its own landmark. The office building has more than 4,500 employees, more than 90% of which are R&D personnel. There are 14 technology R&D centers and 7 customer support centers around the world.
Yin Botao also grew from a regular engineer to a leader in the chip industry.
From '0' to '100', a few life and death
'I don't think it's like, because we are 0. When we first joined, maybe even the chip's integrated circuit looks like