"China's integrated circuit market demand accounts for 62.8% of the world's total, and it is the world's largest integrated circuit market." Huo Yutao, director of the Integrated Circuit Research Institute of CCID Think Tank, said in an interview with reporters that driven by the market, my country's integrated circuit industry continues to maintain rapid growth , The ability of technological innovation is continuously improved, the strength of key enterprises has been greatly enhanced, and the ability to support industrial development has been significantly improved.
Rapid growth of industry scale
"Under the stimulus of market demand and the support of relevant national policies, my country's integrated circuit industry has maintained a high level of stabilization and steady progress." Ding Ding, Chairman of China High-end Chip Alliance and President of National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Co., Ltd. Wenwu said.
In 2016, my country's integrated circuit output was 132.9 billion pieces, a year-on-year increase of about 22.3%. The annual sales volume was 433.55 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20.1%, far higher than the global growth rate of 1.1%. The development effect of regional agglomeration is more obvious. The development of the three major industrial clusters in the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and the Beijing-Tianjin Rim Bohai Sea is accelerating. Field layout
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"Overall, China's integrated circuit industry is developing towards a higher technological content, and the industrial structure is becoming more optimized and reasonable." Huo Yutao said.
A typical performance is the continuous increase in the proportion of chip design industry. Huo Yutao analyzed that due to the relatively low technical threshold, small investment, and quick results, the packaging and testing industry has long occupied a relatively high proportion in China's integrated circuit industry. However, with the gradual increase in the strength of domestic chip design companies, the proportion of the design industry in the industry chain has steadily increased, and the proportion of the industry has exceeded the packaging and testing industry since 2015.
The proportion of each link in the industry chain tends to be reasonable. Among them, driven by multi-level needs such as mobile smart terminals, IPTV and video surveillance, cloud computing, big data, and smart hardware innovation, the chip design industry achieved sales revenue of 164.43 billion yuan in 2016, a year-on-year increase of 24.1%. Benefiting from the increase in orders for the chip design industry, the chip manufacturing capacity utilization rate continued to be fully loaded. In 2016, sales revenue was 112.69 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.1%. Under the influence of full manufacturing capacity and overseas mergers and acquisitions, the packaging and testing industry achieved sales revenue of 156.43 billion yuan in 2016, a year-on-year increase of 13%.
"The chip design industry accounts for nearly 40%, which will bring a large number of orders for downstream chip manufacturing and packaging and testing, and effectively promote the coordinated development of the industrial chain. Wuhan, Shenzhen, Hefei, Quanzhou and other places plan to deploy or start construction of memory chip production lines , The layout of memory products is being rolled out in an all-round way, indicating that the center of the next round of global memory development will gradually shift to China." Said Xia Yan, an analyst at CCID Think Tank Integrated Circuit Research Institute.
Capital operations are becoming more active.
On March 28, 2017, China Development Bank and Huaxin Investment Management Co., Ltd. signed cooperation agreements with Tsinghua Unisplendour Group and Group respectively. Ziguang will receive investment and financing support of up to 150 billion yuan, focusing on the development of integrated circuit-related business sectors.
The integrated circuit industry has large investment and slow returns. It is a “cash-burning” industry, but the enthusiasm for capital has not diminished. In 2016, the investment scale of my country's integrated circuit manufacturing field increased by 31.1%.
Huo Yutao believes that the prosperity of the investment and financing market of the integrated circuit industry is inseparable from the funding and policy guidance of the national and local governments. Since the promulgation of the "National Integrated Circuit Industry Development Promotion Program" in 2014 and the establishment of the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, local governments have established local investment funds to stimulate social capital investment in the integrated circuit industry.
It is understood that as of the end of 2016, the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund had invested more than 80 billion yuan to support the integrated circuit industry. Driven by the national fund, local funds, social capital, financial institutions, etc. paid more attention to the integrated circuit industry, and the financing difficulties of the industry were initially eased.
According to Ding Wenwu, there is a strong willingness to establish sub-funds in various regions. Beijing, Wuhan, Shanghai, Sichuan, and Shaanxi have successively established industrial funds. At the end of 2016, the total size of local funds announced in various regions exceeded 200 billion yuan.
Domestic companies and capital have stepped onto the stage of international mergers and acquisitions. For example, Qingxin Huachuang took the lead in the acquisition of Howe Technology, Wu Yuefeng Capital took the lead in the acquisition of US Semiconductor, Jianguang Capital acquired NXP's RF and standard products division, SMIC acquired the Italian foundry LFoundry, and Changjiang Electronics Technology acquired Singapore Star Kejinpeng, Tongfu Microelectronics acquired AMD's packaging and testing plant and so on. In the past two years, the amount of international mergers and acquisitions led by domestic capital reached 13 billion US dollars.
The increasingly active capital operation has greatly boosted confidence in industrial development. A number of major chip manufacturing projects have been launched: TSMC has launched a 12-inch advanced logic process production line project in Nanjing with a total investment of 3 billion US dollars. It is expected to be put into operation in the second half of 2018, with a monthly production capacity of 20,000 chips; Fujian Jinhua Memory Project Phase I investment 37 billion yuan. It is expected that in 2018, a monthly production capacity of 60,000 DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) chips will be formed; the Wuhan memory project with a total investment of 24 billion US dollars will be launched...
"The development strategies of large multinational corporations in China are also gradually adjusted, from sole proprietorship to technology licensing, strategic investment, advanced capacity transfer, joint ventures, etc., and the transfer of international advanced technology and capital to the country is accelerating." Xia Yan said.
The level of international cooperation continues to increase, and high-end chip and advanced technology cooperation has become a hot spot. SMIC, Huawei, Qualcomm and IMEC of Belgium formed a joint venture to jointly develop 14-nanometer chip advanced manufacturing processes; Intel and Qualcomm signed agreements with Tsinghua University, Lanqi Technology and Guizhou Province to carry out in-depth cooperation in the field of server chips; Qualcomm and The Guizhou Provincial Government established a joint venture company Huaxintong to develop high-performance server chips based on the ARM architecture; Tianjin Haiguang obtained the X86 architecture authorization from AMD to establish a joint venture company to develop server CPU chips.
Close to the world's first camp
Spreadtrum recently launched a 14-nanometer 8-core 64-bit LTE chip platform for the global high-end smartphone market. This chip is made by Intel, which is the first time that Intel has made a chip for a Chinese integrated circuit design company.
"A series of policies and measures to encourage industrial development have been introduced successively, effectively alleviating the investment and financing bottleneck, further optimizing the development environment, stimulating the internal vitality of the market, and industrial development to a new level." said Peng Hongbing, deputy director of the Electronic Information Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Peng Hongbing pointed out that the innovation capability of my country's integrated circuit industry has been significantly enhanced. The performance of high-end general-purpose chips such as CPUs has continued to improve, the system-level chip design capabilities have approached the international advanced level, the 32/28 nanometer manufacturing process has achieved mass production, and the memory has achieved a strategic layout. Through the integration of international resources, the medium and high-end packaging and testing capabilities have been greatly improved, and the equipment and materials industry has gradually gained a foothold.
"The strength of my country's integrated circuit backbone enterprises is close to the world's first camp." Huo Yutao said.
In 2016, the number of domestic design companies entering the world's top 50 reached 11, and two of them entered the top 10. SMIC has been profitable for 19 consecutive quarters, with revenue, gross profit and profit all hitting record highs. Ziguang Zhanrui entered the top 10 global IC design companies, with a design level of 16/14 nanometers. After Changjiang Electronics Technology acquired Xingke Jinpeng, the industry ranked third in the global packaging and testing industry. Significant progress has been made in the development of complete sets of equipment and serialization of North Huachuang and China Micro Semiconductor.
Peng Hongbing pointed out that the situation that my country's integrated circuit innovation technology and product reserves are insufficient, and the core technology is controlled by others has not fundamentally changed. The structure of single product structure, mostly in the low-end and high-end products mainly dependent on imports has not fundamentally changed, which has seriously affected industrial transformation and upgrading and even national security.
"China is the world's largest integrated circuit market, but it is not the largest integrated circuit producer." Huo Yutao said frankly, "China's integrated circuits have always relied on imports. The main reason is that the structure of domestic independent chip products is still in the middle and low end. The structure has not been fundamentally changed. , China’s chip self-sufficiency rate is only about 8%."
Ye Tianchun, director of the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, summed up the strategic significance of developing the integrated circuit industry: "Solve the Chinese chip and support China's development in the next 30 years." It can be said that integrated circuits are the core of the information technology industry.
Peng Hongbing revealed that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will pay more attention to resource integration, strengthen top-level design, focus on key enterprises, key nodes, and major projects, promote the coordinated development of the industrial chain, and create a manufacturing innovation center. At the same time, with application requirements as the traction, strengthen the coordination of software and hardware, and create a large ecosystem platform.
"We must continue to promote product differentiation, further strengthen demand traction, define chips with terminals, improve the level of consumer and communication products, improve product cost-effectiveness, step up the layout of industrial control, automotive electronics, sensor and other chip development, and promote the supply of chip products. Side structural reforms.” Xia Yan said.