China, the Next Semiconductor Industry Power

Recently, the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (hereinafter referred to as the "large fund") frequently catalyzed the development of the semiconductor industry upstream and downstream: to help SMIC Shenzhen expand its 8-inch wafer fab; and Changjiang Electronics to acquire the world's fourth-largest package testing company Xingkejin Friends; China's chip equipment maker China Microelectronics invested 480 million yuan; large fund may also participate in the acquisition of the well-known chip maker Marvell mobile phone chip business. At the same time, Chinese companies occupied 9 seats in the world's top 50 fabless IC supplier rankings in 2014. In time, China is becoming the next semiconductor industry power...

"China's ambitious plan to support the local IC manufacturing industry in the form of foundries in the late 1990s was not as successful as expected;" IC Insights said: "But the Chinese government still intends to build a dynamic IC in China. In the industrial environment, promoting the establishment of a new fabless chip company is one of its strategic contents."

IC Insights pointed out that the Chinese government’s plan is to invest USD 19.5 billion in the semiconductor industry to establish large funds, in addition to US$ 97.4 billion from local governments in China as well as private equity investment companies: “We believe that these investments may be significant. Change the market layout of future global IC suppliers."

China has been regarded as the next semiconductor industry power over the past few years, but at present it has not yet seen its concrete results; so far, China’s influence in the electronics industry is still mainly in the identity of its consumers, as well as its circuit boards/systems. Product assembly. However, despite the slow progress of Chinese foundry companies and fabless chip companies are still in their infancy, industry observers still believe that China's potential should not be underestimated.

"China will be active in the IC industry in the future and it should be taken seriously." IC Insights said: "As China's chip design industry continues to progress, we expect that more and more local companies will enter the world's largest companies. Fabless IC manufacturers list. "The agency will formally announce the 2014 top 50 global fabless IC companies list at the end of the month.

According to data released by the General Administration of Customs in January this year, China’s integrated circuit chip imports in 2013 were US$2322 billion, which exceeded the amount of US$219.6 billion in crude oil imports. The core components of information products still require large imports.

Just entering 2015, industry professionals have predicted that the localization of integrated circuits will usher in a big era. Although the global semiconductor integrated circuit industry was slowed down by the debt crisis in 2012, it also started the recovery process with the outbreak of mobile intelligent terminals, achieving continuous growth in the industry scale, as the penetration rate of mobile intelligent terminals tends to saturate. The slowdown in future growth is an inevitable trend.

Although "slow growth" will be the hallmark of the global semiconductor industry in 2015. However, for China's integrated circuit industry, the domestic integrated circuit industry will develop rapidly under the dual influence of sustained growth of the entire industry and domestic policies.

The latest global Top 50 fabless IC design company, 9 in China

According to the latest report from IC Insights, a market research organization, Chinese chip companies have occupied 9 seats in the world's top 50 fabless IC supplier rankings in 2014. This figure was only 1 in 2009; Five of China's chip companies are focused on the current hottest smartphone market.

IC Insights stated that China's fabless IC industry is still relatively small, and its 2014 total revenue contraction accounts for only 8% of the total revenue of the top 50 fabless IC companies (about US$80.5 billion). However, China's fabless IC industry has grown significantly and is strategic. The agency pointed out that Chinese manufacturers’ market share in the total revenue of the world’s top 50 fabless IC companies is twice the combined total of European and Japanese companies.

The U.S. companies accounted for 19 seats in the world's top 50 fabless IC companies in 2014, and accounted for 64% of the total revenue of the top 50 fabless IC companies in the world; as for Japanese companies Only 1% of the total revenue of the top 50 fabless IC companies in the world accounted for only 1%, and the share of the country's market share in other regions including South Korea was 6%.

China's chip design company has occupied 9 seats in the world's top 50 fabless IC supplier rankings in 2014. This number was only 1 in 2009.

Bill McClean, president of IC Insights, said that the Chinese government and local industry leaders shifted the focus of the semiconductor industry's development strategy last fall from foundries to fabless IC design companies. Spreadtrum has become one of the best examples of a new strategy for the Chinese semiconductor industry. The company became one of several fabless chip companies that China planned to merge last year and achieved a total of 15 Intel in September. Billion dollar investment.

As the world's largest semiconductor market, China, the global Top 50 fabless IC design company, only 9 of them are failing in China.

China's IC industry is driven by the terminal industry. The IC design is the closest to the market, and the overall level is also the closest to the international level. It has grown a group of leading chip companies including Spreadtrum and Hass. After designing, it will lead to seal testing and wafer manufacturing, and then drive equipment manufacturing.

Equipment manufacturing companies provide core and supporting equipment for chip manufacturing companies, but they are also the weakest link in the entire industry upstream and downstream. The major funds have played a more catalytic role, driving 120 billion yuan in local funds and industrial capital investment. The large funds help China to seal mergers and acquisitions, invest in wafer fabs and equipment manufacturers by funding, not only supporting a group of companies on a large scale, but also making up for domestic industry weaknesses.

HiSilicon, Spreadtrum, SMIC, and Changjiang Electronics Technology, led by major funds, have comprehensively covered the IC design, foundry, and package testing of the semiconductor industry in China, creating a true semiconductor carrier. After years of accumulation and catch-up, are they stuck in the three important aspects of semiconductor development?

With the explosive development of the mobile Internet and smart terminals, Hais, Spreadtrum’s IC shipments, which are the leaders of domestic IC design companies, have greatly improved, and still have a gap with first-tier manufacturers, and remain in technology. The stage of catch-up has already become an example of domestic IC design.

Hass: Ending the "Lack of Core" Screen

HiSilicon Semiconductor Co., Ltd. was established in October 2004 and is a fast-growing chip and optical device company. Hass's business includes chips and solutions in the fields of consumer electronics, communications, and optical devices, and has been successfully applied in more than 100 countries and regions in the world. In the field of consumer electronics, it has introduced network monitoring chips and solutions, video phone chips and Solutions, DVB chips and solutions and IPTV chips and solutions. With many years of technology accumulation, Hass has mastered world-class IC design and verification technology, has advanced EDA design platform, development process and specifications. It has successfully developed more than 100 chips with independent intellectual property rights and has applied for more than 500 patents.

As early as 1991, Huawei established an ASIC design center. According to industry insiders, the design center can be regarded as the predecessor of Hass, mainly for Huawei communications equipment design chip. Afterwards, as Europe gradually began to enter the 3G era, in 2004, Huawei established Hass Semiconductor, preparing to start with 3G chips, and has successively entered products such as Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, NTT DoCoMo and other top global operators. The sales amounted to nearly 100 million pieces, and probably occupied half of the market share of Qualcomm, the oldest 3G chip maker.

In 2010, as the United States, Northern Europe and other regions announced their entry into the 4G era, Huawei took the initiative to release the LTE 4G chip Balong 700, and made terminal devices such as internet cards and home wireless gateways, and after the release of domestic 4G licenses, Hass With the introduction of a new generation of products, it is no longer subject to other chip manufacturers.

On June 24, 2014, Huawei officially released the flagship model of the Glory brand, Glory 6. It is worth noting that the handset is a "Kylin 920" developed by HiSilicon, a chip maker owned by Huawei. According to Huawei, the chip is the world's first commercial eight-core LTE Cat6 mobile phone chip. Now, the international flagship Huawei Mate7 and Glory 6 Extreme Edition are equipped with Hassir Kirin K925 and K928 respectively, and the performance can completely compete with Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 and MediaTek MT6595 processors.

On the morning of August 20, 2014, Skyworth and HiSilicon jointly launched GLED TVs with China's first smart TV chip with independent intellectual property rights and mass production. Liu Weizhi, director of the Skyworth Group and president of the color TV business division, said that this is China's first self-developed smart TV chip. It was applied for the first time in Skyworth's TV products. 'The first product that can be mass-produced in the project has a production scale of 100,000 grades, which marks the end of the era of the Chinese TV industry's lack of core and low screen.

Not only that, Hass also cooperated with TSMC to become the first mobile chip customer to mass-produce FinFET (Fin Field-Effect Transistor) 16nm process. According to statistics, TSMC and HiSilicon's chips are based on the ARM Cortex-A57 64-bit architecture. The architecture is based on AEMv8 and can achieve a frequency of 2.6GHz. The overall performance is 3 times faster than the previous generation of processors and supports virtualization. , Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), can be used on mobile phones. Routers and other high-end networking areas.