"In 2017, China's imports of integrated circuits reached 377 billion pieces, a year-on-year increase of 10.1%; The import volume was 260.1 billion US dollars (about 1756.1 billion yuan), a year-on-year increase of 14.6%. In 2017, China's import of goods was 12.46 trillion yuan, that is, the import of integrated circuits accounted for 14.1% of China's total import, while China's total crude oil import in the same period was only about 150 billion US dollars. China has spent nearly twice as much on semiconductor chip imports as on crude oil.
Recently, more and more people pay attention to the progress of chips independently developed in China. If you want to refine into a Chinese "core", what steps do you need?
Maybe not everyone knows integrated circuits, but many people have heard of Moore's law. Moore's Law means that when the price remains unchanged, the number of components that can be accommodated on the integrated circuit will double every 18 months, and the performance will also double. Half a century ago, Moore, one of the founders of Intel, put forward this speculation, which has lasted for more than 50 years.
Moore's law reveals the development speed of the field of integrated circuits. In such high-speed innovation and development, integrated circuit products continue to reduce costs, improve performance and increase functions. It is also in such rapid development that the gap of integrated circuit technology among countries is widening. Industry insiders said that if China wants to catch up with top companies in major integrated circuit fields, it needs not only time, but the whole systematic improvement.
According to the public information of the General Administration of customs, the import volume of integrated circuits has exceeded that of crude oil for three consecutive years since 2015, and the import difference between the two is more than 95 billion US dollars every year. Among them, in 2017, China's imports of integrated circuits reached 377 billion pieces, a year-on-year increase of 10.1%; The import volume was 260.1 billion US dollars (about 1756.1 billion yuan), a year-on-year increase of 14.6%. In 2017, China's import of goods was 12.46 trillion yuan, that is, the import of integrated circuits accounted for 14.1% of China's total import, while China's total crude oil import in the same period was only about 150 billion US dollars. China has spent nearly twice as much on semiconductor chip imports as on crude oil.
Chip refers to the silicon chip containing integrated circuit. It is very small and often part of computer or other electronic equipment. Chipset is a series of interrelated chip combinations. They are interdependent and can play more roles when combined. For example, the central processing unit (CPU) in the computer, the RF in the mobile phone, the baseband and and the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) in the communication base station are larger integrated circuits composed of multiple chips. The integrated circuit is a very precise instrument, and its unit is nanometer. One nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter. This has very strict and high standard requirements for design and manufacturing process.
There are many kinds of chips. Gu Wenjun, chief analyst of xinmou research, told the Beijing Youth Daily: "in terms of product types alone, there are dozens of major categories and thousands of small categories of chips; If the equipment process is involved, there will be more. The United States is in a leading position in an integrated and all-round way, and we have only made breakthroughs in some fields, and these fields are not core and high-end fields. For example, China has almost no memory, CPU, FPG, high-end analog chips, power chips and other fields. If China makes efforts in R & D, there may be a breakthrough in some small categories. "
Taking the operator's business as an example, the communication base station equipment is one of its most important products, and there are hundreds of chips in a communication base station to realize different functions“ In short, the base station transmits and recovers the signal. After recovering the signal, there must be a chip filter to stabilize the signal; Then there is a chip to amplify this particularly small signal; Then there is a chip for analysis and processing; Then the chip is responsible for transmission and distribution. The base station core is similar to a computer and can realize various functions, but it can support multiple mobile phones, so it is faster and the chip is more complex. " These people said.
Among them, the most typical is ADC chip. At present, China is unable to produce alternative products. ADC chip is an analog-to-digital conversion chip, which is responsible for converting the continuous analog signal received by the antenna into the digital signal of call or internet access. At present, ADC mainly depends on adenault, Texas Instruments and other companies.
In terms of software, EDA simulation software is another typical example. With this software, the electronic designer can design the chip system on the computer. A lot of work can be completed by the computer, and the combination test of multiple products can be realized. If there is no EDA simulation software, it needs to be designed and tested manually, which consumes countless costs such as manpower and time. At present, there are more than ten kinds of EDA software that have entered China and have a wide impact, basically from the United States.
An expert in the field of chip manufacturing introduced to the reporter of Beiqing daily that the manufacturing process of a chip is very complex. A production line involves more than 50 industries and 2000-5000 processes. For example, the foundry needs to purify the "sand" into silicon, cut it into wafers, and then process the wafers. The wafer processing plant consists of two processes. The former process is divided into several modules - lithography, film, etching, cleaning and injection; The latter process is mainly packaging - interconnection, wiring and sealing. Among them, lithography is the link between manufacturing and design.
Many of these processes are carried out in independent factories, and the equipment used also needs to be manufactured by special equipment factories; The materials used include hundreds of special gases, liquids and targets, all of which need special chemical industry. In addition, the production of integrated circuits is carried out in the super clean room, so exhaust and air purification systems are also required.
It is said that integrated circuits are higher technology than aerospace. The industry insiders said that this statement is not unreasonable. "The reliability of aerospace is estimated to be four nines and five nines (x nines represent the ratio of the normal use time of the system to the total time during the use of the software system for one year). Now the purity of silicon wafer material should be more than 6 9. "
According to the report of the prospective research institute, at present, the global chips are still mainly the products of enterprises in the United States, Japan and Europe, and the high-end market is almost monopolized by these three main regions. In the field of high-end chips, because domestic manufacturers have not yet formed scale effect and cluster effect, their production is still dominated by "OEM" mode.
According to the data by the end of 2015, there are 94 advanced wafer manufacturers in the world, including 17 in the United States, 71 in Asia (9 in China) and 6 in Europe. Japan took the lead in the 1980s, but its global semiconductor market share has decreased significantly since the 1990s. By 2015, only three Japanese chip manufacturers ranked among the top 20 in the world - Toshiba, Renesas electronics and Sony. At the same time, other countries in East Asia have become major companies in the dynamic random access memory market. Samsung Electronics and hisilic are currently the second and third largest semiconductor companies in the world.
According to the latest statistics of the American Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), from January to February 2017, the chip market share of China and the United States expanded, accounting for 33.10% and 19.73% respectively; The market share of chips in Japan and Europe decreased to 9.29% and 9.12% respectively. China's chip market is the largest and fastest-growing market in the world, but its dependence on foreign countries is too high.
Since January 1993, Intel has been the largest chip manufacturer in the world. Intel accounts for 80% of the CPU processors used in personal computers. The familiar Pentium, Celeron, core and other processors come from Intel. At present, Intel's annual revenue continues to grow - whether from PCs, data center servers, or IOT chips.
In 2016, Intel remained the world's largest chip supplier, with annual chip sales of US $54.09 billion, an increase of 4.6% over 2015; The market share reached 15.7%.
Qualcomm is another giant in mobile phone chips. At present, in addition to Huawei, Samsung and other mobile phone manufacturers, all other Android mobile phone manufacturers use Qualcomm processors. In addition to the cost of buying chips, Qualcomm also charges patent fees for each mobile phone. Previously, Meizu went to court with Qualcomm. Li Nan, vice president of Meizu, said that more than 100 mobile phone manufacturers had signed patent purchase agreements with Qualcomm.
At home, China's semiconductor industry is also accelerating in recent years.
According to the statistics of China Semiconductor Industry Association, in 2017, the sales of China's integrated circuit industry reached 541.13 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.8%. Among them, the growth rate of integrated circuit manufacturing industry was the fastest, with a year-on-year increase of 28.5% in 2017, and the sales reached 144.81 billion yuan. The design industry and the sealing and testing industry continued to maintain rapid growth, with growth rates of 26.1% and 20.8% respectively, and sales of 207.35 billion yuan and 188.97 billion yuan respectively.
According to the data from the General Administration of customs, in 2017, China exported 204.35 billion pieces of integrated circuits, a year-on-year increase of 13.1%; The export value was US $66.88 billion, a year-on-year increase of 9.8%.
According to the latest ranking report of China's top ten integrated circuit design / manufacturing industries in 2017 released by the semiconductor association and the China Electronic Information Industry Development Research Institute of the Ministry of industry and information technology, among the top ten integrated circuit design enterprises in China, Huawei Hisilicon ranked first with a sales volume of 36.1 billion yuan; Tsinghua Ziguang zhanrui ranked second with 11 billion yuan; ZTE microelectronics ranked third with 7.6 billion yuan. Then there are Huada semiconductor, smart core microelectronics, huiding technology, Shilan microelectronics, Duntai Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., Geke microelectronics and Zhongxing microelectronics.
Some experts said that the start of integrated circuits in China is not too late, only a few years later than that in the United States. However, due to various factors such as European and American technological blockade and domestic historical problems, there is a large gap with Europe and America, so it is difficult to catch up in a short time.
A practitioner told the reporter of Beiqing daily that from the perspective of the whole industry, the card of the United States is "IP (intellectual property)", "the war around IP is more intense. Even if you use other people's technology, they also have property rights. You can't bypass it to solve the problem." The data show that the IP core designs some common but complex functional blocks in digital circuits, such as FIR filter, SDRAM controller, PCI interface and so on, into modules with modifiable parameters. The above-mentioned person said that the word "overtaking at a corner" has been popular in China's integrated circuit industry. Many people are wondering whether they can jump away from the IP core of the United States and start a new stove and develop a complete set of ecosystem? But it's too complicated.
Many industry researchers said that at present, China's integrated circuits are systematically backward, and the overall improvement needs to be done from basic research and talent training, which takes a long time. "We need to cultivate basic talents in mathematics, physics and other disciplines first. After these people are brought up, they cultivate talents who intersect with other disciplines. They need to master technologies such as industrial design. "
Huawei Hisilicon Semiconductor Co., Ltd. was established in 2004, formerly known as Huawei integrated circuit design center founded in 1991. At present, Hisilicon is headquartered in Shenzhen and has design branches in Beijing, Shanghai, Silicon Valley and Sweden. Its products cover chips and solutions in wireless networks, fixed networks, digital media and other fields, and have been successfully applied in more than 100 countries and regions around the world; In the field of digital media, SOC network monitoring chips and solutions, videophone chips and solutions, DVB chips and solutions and IPTV chips and solutions have been launched. Huawei Hisilicon products are used in many business lines such as operator business and consumer business. Ordinary consumers know it more because the Kirin processor carried on Huawei mobile phones. At present, many Huawei mobile phones, including mate series, P series and glory mobile phones, are carried. Kirin 960 was also rated as "2016 best Android processor" by foreign media, surpassing Qualcomm processor. He Tingbo, President of Hisilicon, once said, "we are starting to make 7 nm and are also watching more advanced processes such as 5 nm with the industry."
Ziguang zhanrui is developed by Ziguang group through capital operation and enterprise layout in response to the National IC development strategy. In December 2013, Ziguang Group acquired Spreadtrum communications, a communication baseband chip design enterprise listed on Nasdaq, the first in China and the third in the world, and then completed the acquisition of radico microelectronics, a communication chip design enterprise listed on NASDAQ and the second in China, in July 2014. In 2016, Ziguang holdings Shanghai Hongmao Microelectronics Co., Ltd. laid out the field of integrated circuit packaging and testing. Meanwhile, in 2016, Ziguang held Wuhan Changjiang storage Co., Ltd. and successively signed and landed memory chip and memory manufacturing plants with a total investment of nearly US $100 billion in Chengdu and Nanjing.
According to its official website, in 2015, Ziguang zhanrui reached a cooperation with Intel to develop and market a system chip based on Intel x86 architecture. At present, Ziguang zhanrui has more than 5000 employees, of which more than 90% are R & D personnel; It has 16 technology R & D centers around the world. Ziguang zhanrui is committed to developing domestic CPU with independent controllable architecture.
Original address: https://www.eeboard.com/news/zizhuxinpian-3/
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