"Korean semiconductor has occupied an important position in the global semiconductor industry chain. In the world's top ten semiconductor sales ranking in the first half of 2020 (1h20) released by IC insights, Korean manufacturers accounted for two places, namely Samsung ranked second and SK Hynix ranked fourth.
Samsung and SK Hynix are the business cards of the Korean semiconductor industry, but if we look at the two separately, we find that there is also some competition within Korean semiconductor.
Struggle between Samsung and SK Hynix
Benefiting from the "heavy industry promotion plan" (HCI promotion plan) launched by the Korean government in 1973 and the six-year plan to support the semiconductor industry launched in 1975, Samsung and SK Hynix began to develop into the semiconductor field with the support of the Korean consortium. In the process of establishing their local semiconductor industry chain, storage is the focus of their layout, which is also the original "weapon" for Samsung and SK Hynix to expand their territory in the semiconductor industry.
In terms of the development of Samsung and SK Hynix, Samsung was established earlier than SK Hynix (Samsung announced to enter the semiconductor field in 1974, while SK Hynix's predecessor modern electronics was established in 1983, Hynix became independent from Hyundai Group in 2001, and was renamed SK Hynix in 2012). Although SK Hynix started late, their progress in the DRAM field is similar - in 1985, both Samsung and SK Hynix mass produced 256K DRAM; In 1992, both developed 64M DRAM.
The launch of 64M DRAM also means that Samsung and SK Hynix caught up with the leading DRAM manufacturers at that time. Since then, Samsung and SK Hynix began to emerge in the storage field and began their competition with each other - in August 1994, Samsung surpassed Japan and the United States and took the lead in launching 256M DRAM. The following year, SK Hynix developed 256M SDRAM for the first time. In 2005, Samsung developed the industry's advanced DDR3 SDRAM. In 2007, SK Hynix's DDR3 DRAM was the first to obtain Intel product certification.
After entering the new century, the demand for memory chips used in the consumer field began to increase, so the competition for DRAM in the mobile field began - in 2011, Samsung began to mass produce 30 nm 4GB mobile DRAM (lpddr2); In 2013, SK Hynix developed 20nm 6GB lpddr3; In 2014, Samsung began mass production of 20 nm 8GB mobile DRAM (lpddr4); In 2015, SK Hynix launched the commercialized 8GB lpddr4.
With the passage of time, storage products have also changed, and the emergence of NAND has also become a new field of competition between Samsung and SK Hynix - in 2002, Samsung developed 90nm 2GB NAND flash memory, and two years later, SK Hynix also successfully developed its NAND flash memory.
Since then, NAND technology has also changed, from 2D to 3D, and has become a new competitive point - in 2013, Samsung launched the industry's first 3D stacked NAND flash memory and began mass production (v-nand); Subsequently, SK Hynix also made a breakthrough in 3D NAND. In the next few years, Samsung successively launched 32-layer, 48 layer, 64 layer and 128 layer products, while SK Hynix successively released 36 layer, 48 layer, 96 layer and 128 layer products.
Sk Hynix's counterattack in the storage field
In the chase between SK Hynix and Samsung, they have already gained a firm foothold in the field of multiple subdivided memory chips.
According to the data released by chinaflashmarket, in the Q2 DRAM market ranking in 2020, Samsung still ranked first with 43.5% of the market, and SK Hynix ranked second with 30.3% of the market.
In addition, according to the latest data of trendforce, from the revenue of NAND market in Q1 2020, Samsung ranked first with a revenue of US $4.5 billion, while SK Hynix ranked fifth with us $1.44 billion.
From these two aspects, SK Hynix is lower than Samsung in both revenue and market share. But now the semiconductor market environment has changed, and the rise of emerging fields has also brought new development opportunities for many semiconductor manufacturers. In this case, SK Hynix is also actively seeking breakthroughs, and storage seems to be an area they are ready to work in.
Therefore, we can see that in October this year, SK Hynix and Intel both announced that SK Hynix acquired Intel's flash memory business for us $9 billion. The semiconductor research office of trendforce Jibang consulting pointed out that the merger is expected to make the two companies play a comprehensive effect in the field of enterprise SSD and open the prelude to the integration of NAND flash industry.
In terms of data, according to the survey report released by the British survey company omdia, the market share of SK Hynix (9.9%) and Intel (9.5%) will exceed the second armored man (19.0%) and second only to Samsung (35.9%). According to this data, even if SK Hynix completes the acquisition, it still has a large gap with Samsung in market share. On the other hand, SK Hynix has successfully ranked second in the NAND field through this move, which also seems to be a challenge to leading enterprises.
In the third quarter financial report of SK Hynix not long ago, the company also made a prospect for the NAND field - according to businesskorea, the company will ensure the self-sustaining business ability of NAND segment market in the next three years, and make the company's NAND sales more than double before purchase in five years.
Multi field layout and seek breakthrough
As we all know, Korean semiconductor enterprises represented by Samsung and SK Hynix are trying to gradually reduce their dependence on storage products.
To this end, Samsung has not only increased investment in R & D in advanced manufacturing processes to seize the wafer foundry market, but also tried to challenge the position of Sony, the industry leader in the CIS field. These two areas are also the way SK Hynix uses to reduce its dependence on storage products.
In terms of wafer foundry, in May 2017, Samsung officially announced that it would separate the wafer foundry business department and become a pure wafer foundry enterprise, and plans to obtain a 25% share of the chip foundry market in the next five years. In the next few years, as one of the few wafer foundries still committed to the research and development of advanced processes below 10nm process, Samsung has made some achievements in this field, ranking the second in the wafer foundry industry, and is still trying to challenge the position of industry leader TSMC (according to the latest news, according to relevant media reports, Executives of Samsung's semiconductor business department recently revealed that Samsung plans to mass produce 3nm process in 2022. According to this progress, Samsung may launch 3nm process earlier than TSMC.
In the same year that Samsung became independent of its Wafer Foundry Department, SK Hynix also officially split its wafer foundry business into an independent business unit, which was named SK Hynix system IC. The service object is IC designers without wafer factories. The main purpose of splitting the wafer foundry business is to strengthen its competitiveness in this regard. Unlike Samsung's commitment to advanced technology, SK Hynix focuses on OEM of 8-inch wafers.
As we all know, the supply of 8-inch wafers has been tight for several times in the past two years due to the increased demand for semiconductors in the terminal market. Benefiting from this market situation, SK Hynix also accelerated their layout in wafer foundry this year - at the beginning of this year, SK Hynix acquired the wafer foundry Department of magnachip semiconductor and decided to rename the business "key foundry" to seize the wafer foundry market. In March, SK Hynix spent US $435 million to buy the wafer foundry Department of magnachip semiconductor to obtain the production line and technology of the 8-inch wafer foundry. In July, Korean media reported that SK Hynix system IC, a subsidiary of SK Hynix specializing in wafer foundry business, sold 1206 pieces of semiconductor production equipment at its M8 plant in Qingzhou, Zhongqing North Road, South Korea to a joint venture of the group in Wuxi, China at the price of 194.2 billion won (about 1.15 billion yuan), With a view to further expanding its wafer foundry business in China.
According to the report of flash memory market, SK Hynix will move the equipment of Qingzhou M8 factory to Wuxi, mainly because the scale of fabless market in South Korea is very small, which brings difficulties to the company's business expansion. Therefore, SK Hynix decided to move the wafer foundry production line to China with thousands of fabless companies.
In the CIS field, Samsung also took the lead in making layout in this field. Once, with the demand of mobile terminal for CIS, Samsung has occupied a certain advantage in this field. However, due to the expansion of market demand for CIS, it also provides Samsung with a starting point other than the storage field. Therefore, in recent years, Samsung, which ranks second, also began to try to challenge the position of leading Sony, and began to make efforts in security, automobile and other fields.
Sk Hynix followed Samsung and began to layout the CIS development of mobile devices. According to relevant reports, SK Hynix has noticed the CIS field since 2014 and acquired silicon as the starting point for its development of CIS. Sk Hynix has won a large number of customer orders due to the demand for CIS resolution improvement of smartphone front camera in recent years.
At the report meeting of SK Hynix in the second quarter of 2019, according to the report of China business, Che Chenxi, vice president and chief financial officer of SK Hynix, said at the quarterly report briefing that SK Hynix would first start with the M10 plant in Lichuan, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, and gradually convert some of the production lines of DRAM products in the plant into the production line of CMOS image sensors.
In March this year, SK Hynix also named its CMOS image sensor brand "Black Pearl" to strengthen its competition with competitors Sony's Exmor and Samsung isocell. With the release of the new brand, SK Hynix also launched four 1.0 models that can be applied to smart phones μ M (micron) image sensor products. Sk Hynix also said that it has launched 1.0 since the first quarter of this year μ After M products, SK Hynix also plans to launch 0.8 in the second half of the year μ M (48 megapixel) products.
Samsung and SK Hynix regard CIS as one of the ways to reduce their dependence on storage products because CIS has something in common with DRAM technology to a certain extent. According to the news released by SK Hynix, SK Hynix is applying DRAM trench technology to eliminate light interference between pixels, and is conducting some experiments to prevent absorption of photons when using metal partitions. Isocell of Samsung Electronics adopts DRAM process technology and is trying to improve its process to the level of 32nm.
According to relevant analysts, with excellent DRAM technology, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics are expected to narrow the technical gap with leading CIS manufacturers such as Sony.
epilogue
Although there is competition between SK Hynix and Samsung, from the perspective of their roles, if Samsung is opening up territory for South Korea's semiconductor industry, SK Hynix behind him is more like playing a role in consolidating South Korea's semiconductor strength. Although SK Hynix has been covered up by the light of Samsung in terms of achievements, he ranks second in the storage field and is making breakthroughs in the field of wafer foundry and CIS, which is also an opponent that no one can despise.
Editor in charge: Tzh, read the full text“
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