"I. Preface
Chip is known as the "engine" of the information age. It is the "important weapon of the country" competed by all countries. It is a comprehensive embodiment of a country's high-end manufacturing capacity.
Although China has the world's largest semiconductor market and has become the world's second largest integrated circuit design center after the United States, at present, the mainstream products of integrated circuits are still mainly concentrated in the middle and low end. Except that the share of some integrated circuit products of mobile communication terminals and network equipment exceeds 10%, the share of high-end chips is almost zero.
In view of various reasons and the surging international situation, China's electronic enterprises generally accelerated the R & D of microelectronics, integrated circuits and other products in the first half of this year, and the investment increased by 43.6%. The IC industry is becoming the common choice of major cities. Local governments, IC enterprises, capital, universities and research centers are preparing to give full play to the regional collaborative innovation ability and jointly build a regional IC "core" highland.
The first large-scale investment boom in integrated circuits in China occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. The representative ones were the "531 strategy", "908 project" (Wuxi Huajing) and "909 project" (Shanghai Huahong NEC). Although these projects greatly improved the production process conditions of China's integrated circuits at that time, the overall competitiveness of the industry did not improve much, mainly because on the one hand, the technology was lack of foresight, and some process lines were backward when they were just put into operation. On the other hand, they only focused on the introduction of process production lines, and lacked the overall layout and attention to basic technology research and development.
The second wave of "chip fever" broke out at the beginning of this century. Due to the needs of the Chinese market and the support of the government, at that time, integrated circuits became the so-called tuyere, with a large influx of funds and all kinds of agitation. Before and after 2003, representative enterprises in China's integrated circuit industry include Hangzhou Shilan micro, Shanghai Beiling, Huahong NEC, Zhongxing microelectronics and Datang microelectronics in Beijing. In 2005, with the camera chip business, Zhongxing microelectronics landed on Nasdaq, becoming the first chip enterprise to land on NASDAQ in China. It was not until Chen Jin's "Hanxin incident" was exposed in 2006 that this wave of chip boom slowly subsided.
From 2006 to now, China's IC scientific and technological innovation is mainly dominated by "nuclear high base" and "large fund"“ "Nuclear high base" is the abbreviation of the special project "core electronic devices, high-end general chips and basic software products". In 2006, the State Council promulgated the outline of the national medium and long term science and technology development plan (2006-2020), which listed "nuclear high base" as the first of 16 major scientific and technological projects, side by side with manned spaceflight and lunar exploration projects“ "Big fund" is a national integrated circuit industry investment fund established in 2014, which is specially established to promote the development of integrated circuit industry. At present, these two forces still focus on "filling the gap and filling the short board". The main achievements include Shenwei CPU for Shenwei supercomputer and Godson processor for Beidou satellite.
Generally speaking, China has made a lot of efforts in integrated circuits in recent decades, and there have been several upsurge, but it is basically "tactical diligence" and lacks forward-looking thinking and strategic vision. Therefore, there is always a strange circle of "lag catch-up lag" cycle. You know, tactical diligence can never make up for strategic lack and laziness. At present, we must clearly realize that with the slowdown of Moore's Law (Moore's law is expected to end in 2021-2025), it is more and more difficult to further reduce the chip linewidth. The current solution is to break through the limitations of Moore's law through optical signal processing (photonic computing and photonic chip) and AI, which will also bring new situations and opportunities for the development of chip technology. Therefore, in the historical meeting point between the new round of scientific and technological revolution in the world and the transformation of China's development mode, and the unprecedented fierce competition for scientific and technological innovation, any strategic misjudgment may bring disastrous consequences.
As the highland of China's technological innovation, the integrated circuit field should have a higher strategic vision and more forward-looking planning in the future planning. Based on the principle of "advanced layout, supplemented by key short boards", it is clear to take "photon + AI" as the strategic direction of chip development in the future. We will strive to achieve independent control of key core technologies, seize the once-in-a-lifetime historical opportunity, and effectively support the construction of a world power in science and technology. Let the new chip technology really play the role of the first driving force of innovation leading development, so as to stand at the strategic commanding height of world science and technology competition and future development.
2、 In the field of traditional chips, we insist on doing something and not doing something
In the field of traditional chips, the highest threshold is the medium / RF chip and DSP / FPGA chip related to RRU base station equipment, high-speed coherent optical communication chip and high-end server processor chip. In order to realize domestic substitution in these fields, it takes a long time and more investment. Therefore, traditional chips should focus on these four fields. The threshold of middle and low-end chips related to the mobile phone industry is relatively low. Domestic chips in some subdivided fields have even become international leaders. These fields can be solved by enterprises through the market according to their own interests.
(1) Medium / RF chips and DSP / FPGA chips related to RRU base station equipment
The maturity and high reliability requirements of base station chips are different from those of consumer chips. It takes at least two years from trial to batch use, showing the characteristics of rapid technological change, high threshold and low self-sufficiency rate. At present, ZTE and Huawei are basically self-sufficient in baseband chips, and both have baseband chips independently developed. However, in the medium / RF field, it is mainly monopolized by European and American manufacturers such as Ti, ADI, qorvo and IDT. Meanwhile, Ti and Adi are accelerating the development of multi-channel and highly integrated single-chip solutions to meet the requirements of 5g large-scale antenna base stations, such as TI's afe75xx series and ADI's ad93xx series. In this field, domestic chip manufacturers have just started. For example, Nanjing Meichen microelectronics has obtained great technical improvement through its early participation in the national major project "research and development of TD-LTE / td-lte-advanced / TD-SCDMA Base station RF unit based on SIP RF technology", and has a mass production scheme for chip products such as quadrature modulator, mixer, VGA, phase-locked loop, DPD receiver and ADC / DAC. Subsequently, the industrial capacity in this field can be further improved through fixed-point support.
In addition, high-performance DSP / FPGA chips are basically monopolized by Ti and Xilinx. In particular, Xilinx recently launched a highly integrated rfsoc chip, which integrates multi-channel DAC / ADC and high-end FPGA. It has great advantages in both software defined radio (SDR) system and software defined optical network (SDO). In this regard, at present, there are basically no benchmarking products in China, and the follow-up needs to focus on support and increase investment.
(2) Chip related to high-speed coherent optical communication equipment
The chips mainly used in the optical communication module include ta (transimpedance amplifier), APD (avalanche photodiode), La (limiting amplifier), laser chips (VCSEL, DFB and EML), LCT / ICR (integrated coherent transmitter / integrated coherent receiver) and DWDM. At present, the self-sufficiency rate of incoherent optical communication chips and modules below 40Gbps is acceptable, but high-end chips above 100gbps, especially high-speed ICT / ICR (integrated coherent transmitter / integrated coherent receiver) chips, still need to be broken through. At present, high-speed ICT / ICR chips mainly include European, American and Japanese companies, such as infinera, Fujitsu, Finisar, acacia, neophotonics, 0claro and elenion. Domestic Optoelectronics Technology and start-up sifotonics began to provide 100gbps QPSK integrated coherent receiver chips and solutions. Xinyun optoelectronics company is also expected to complete the research and development of 100gbps chip solutions in 2019. Similarly, the industrial capacity in this field can be further improved through fixed-point support.
(3) High end server processor chip
At present, lntel's market share in high-end server processor chips has reached 99%, and its x86 architecture and Microsoft's software ecology have been in an absolute monopoly position. However, in recent years, driven by cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence, the server market demand is strong. The world has set off another upsurge of competition for high-end server processor chips, mainly including AMD's latest Zen processor chip and arm led reduced instruction set architecture. The "breakthrough performance" of Zen architecture can rival Intel's fastest 10 nm broadwell-e processor. Its product family includes 8-core (16 thread) summit ridge desktop processor chip based on Zen architecture and 32 core (64 thread) Naples server processor chip. The enterprises on the arm server chip ecological chain mainly include Marvell (arm server chip business acquired by Cavium), ampere and huaxintong in China. Among them, in order to build a software ecosystem, ampere actively cooperates with leading manufacturers such as Java on the tool side, b0s / BMC and operating system, in order to help customers solve the problem of migrating to the cloud. China's Guizhou huaxintong Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. also officially released its 48 core server chip stardragon with arm architecture this year. The Shenglong processor is embedded with a cryptographic module and software solution independently developed in line with China's "commercial cryptographic algorithm" standard.
Because Wintel ecology is too strong, considering that the software running in the cloud does not need to be inherited from any traditional enterprises, our breakthrough in high-end server chips should start with arm, cloud computing and Linux ecology to ensure sufficient space for design, innovation and improvement.
3、 The development of the next generation photonic integrated chip (PIC) is a top priority
Since 2010, photonic integration technology has entered a period of rapid development. Many major research plans have been deployed around photonic integration technology, and a lot of human and material resources have been invested in the research and development of high-end photonic integrated chips. In the "Horizon 2020" plan, the EU has focused on the deployment of photonic integration research projects, aiming to realize photoelectric hybrid integrated chips based on semiconductor materials or two-dimensional crystal materials. In October 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama announced the national strategy of photonic integrated technology, and the federal government invested $650 million in building a photonic integrated chip R & D and preparation platform in combination with social capital. In 2015, the United States established the "national photon program" industrial alliance, which clearly will support the development of photon basic research and early application research plan, support the development of four research fields and three application capabilities, and put forward the opportunities and objectives of each exploitable field.
In addition to the above high-speed integrated coherent optical transmitter and receiver, photonic integrated chip technology has two more important branches: one is integrated microwave photonic (imwp) chip, which is mainly used in military and civil radio systems, such as phodir (all digital radar based on Photonics) in Italy, rofar (active phased array radar system based on Microwave Photonics) in Russia European GAA (photon front end of next generation SAR) and Hamlet program; Second, digital photonic chips, such as optical DSP, photonic computing chip and photonic AI chip.
Generally speaking, China's photonic integration technology is still in its infancy. The prominent problems restricting the development of China's photonic integration technology include fragmentation of disciplines and research, lack of talents, lack of system architecture research and design, weak R & D strength of process equipment, lack of standardized and standardized photonic integration technology process platform, and backward chip packaging, test and analysis technology. Fortunately, monopolies and giants have not yet formed in this field. If we advance the layout, carefully organize and focus on investment, we still have the opportunity and time window to catch up.
(1) Integrated microwave photonic (imwp) chip
After decades of evolution from digital radio to software radio, the next generation of wireless technology platform is coming out. In the future, global telecommunication networks and emerging large-scale applications in radar, communication and aerospace industries will need new technologies to solve the limitations of current electronic technology on high-capacity and ultra wideband connections. In view of the higher precision, larger bandwidth, stronger flexibility and anti-interference ability of integrated microwave photonic chip, it is considered to be a competitive next-generation wireless technology platform. Russia even said it might completely abandon microwave electronics and specialize in microwave photonics. At present, about 850 companies in Russia are involved in the research and development of microwave photonics. In addition, the EU is also jointly developing a new all photon 28ghz millimeter wave MIMO transceiver chip, and the first version will be launched by the end of 2018. Companies and research institutions participating in the R & D plan include ICCs of lionix, solvates, satrax, linkra, Fraunhofer HHI and NTU, and combine the advantages of two process platforms, polyboard and triplex, through heterogeneous integration.
In the field of integrated microwave photonic chips, China is still in the basic research stage. The recently concluded national 973 Plan Project "basic research on microwave photonic devices and integrated systems for broadband ubiquitous access" focuses on three scientific issues: high bandwidth conversion mechanism, high-precision regulation method and high flexible coordination mechanism under microwave photonic interaction Important breakthroughs have been made in key devices and prototype systems, which provide corresponding theoretical and technical support for future development. The project team developed a flexible microwave photonic flexible satellite transponder prototype covering L / S / Ku / Ka band, and built a distributed, large dynamic and cooperative intelligent optical radio (i-rof) prototype system and research platform. The innovative achievements of the project such as "broadband integration, stable phase transmission and multi frequency reconstruction" have been verified and applied in major national projects such as chang'e-3 X-band beacon signal acquisition, Beidou navigation high orbit satellite orbit monitoring and microwave photonic flexible satellite transponder.
The integrated microwave photonic chip mainly realizes RF signal processing in the optical domain, and its functions can cover the whole RF signal chain of the wireless system, including filtering, IQ modulation, UC / DC (up conversion / down conversion), frequency synthesizer, AWG (arbitrary waveform generation) and photonic ADC / photonic DAC. With the development of integrated coherent optics, integrated microwave photonics, ultra large scale photonic integrated circuits, optical frequency combs, photonic ADCs and photonic digital signal processing technologies, integrated microwave photonic chips can even be developed to large-scale aspic or PSoC (photonic application specific integrated circuits), and may subvert the whole RF technology ecology in the next 5-10 years, It makes the real photonics defined radio (PDR) system possible.
In terms of planning and development path, we can first meet the needs of national defense, aerospace, 5g / b5g and 6G mobile communications, start with single-chip or single-function integration, improve the design and process level, and gradually develop large-scale integrated microwave photonic chips.
(2) High Performance Photonic computing chip and photonic AI chip
Photon calculation is considered to be one of the effective ways to break Moore's law
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