Li Wei: Four Concerns in the IC Industry

Li Yi China Semiconductor Information Industry Development Research Institute CCID Consulting Co., Ltd. Semiconductor Industry Business Director China's integrated circuit market, the actual domestic self-sufficiency rate is less than 10%, the domestic market requires integrated circuit products mainly rely on imports. This highlights the hidden worries of China's integrated circuit industry: the rapid expansion of industry scale, but the market self-sufficiency rate has not been significantly improved.

In the first 10 years of the 21st century, the average annual growth rate of integrated circuit production in China exceeded 25%, and the average annual growth rate of IC sales reached 23%. The scale of China's integrated circuit industry has increased from 2% of the total scale of the world's integrated circuit industry in 2001 to nearly 9% in 2010. China has become one of the fastest growing regions in the world integrated circuit industry in the past 10 years.

But in the same period, the scale of the domestic integrated circuit market also expanded from 114 billion yuan in 2001 to 735 billion yuan in 2010, an increase of 5.5 times. The ratio of domestic IC industry scale to market size has never exceeded 20%. Excluding the sales of overseas commissioned OEMs in the IC industry, the actual domestic self-sufficiency rate in China's IC market is still less than 10%. The IC products required in the domestic market mainly rely on imports. This highlights the first hidden concern of China's integrated circuit industry: the scale of the industry has expanded rapidly, but the market self-sufficiency rate has not been significantly improved.

With the rapid expansion of industry scale, the overall technological level of China's integrated circuit industry has also been comprehensively improved in the past 10 years. With the mass production of several domestic 12-inch production lines, the main body of domestic chip production technology has been upgraded from 5, 6-inch, 0.5-micron and above process levels to 8, 12-inch, 0.18-micron to 90-nanometer, among which SMIC The highest technological level of companies such as Dalian and Intel has reached the level of 65 nanometers.

However, although the technology level of China's integrated circuit industry has been continuously improved, the gap with the international advanced level has not been effectively reduced. This is the second hidden concern of the integrated circuit industry. In the past 10 years, due to restrictions imposed by Western countries on the export of integrated circuit technology, China's integrated circuit chip manufacturing technology has always lagged behind two international advanced technology nodes. Currently, it is represented by the world’s leading semiconductor companies represented by Intel, Samsung Semiconductor, and TSMC. 32-nanometer integrated circuit chip production lines have been completed and put into production. Compared to the domestic 65-nanometer-highest technology, they still lead the 45-nanometer and 32-nanometer generations.

With the expansion of the scale of the domestic integrated circuit industry, a group of local integrated circuit companies represented by SMIC, Hua Hong NEC, HiSilicon, Spreadtrum, Changjiang Electronics, and Nantong Fujitsu have quickly picked up and become the domestic integrated circuit industry. The backbone of development. However, compared with international semiconductor giants such as Intel, Qualcomm, and Riyueguang, these companies still have a large gap in terms of their business scale and technical level. Take SMIC as an example. Its sales revenue in 2010 was only one-tenth that of TSMC, and its revenue gap with GlobalFoundries, the world's third-largest foundry company, is also widening. China's largest IC design company, Hass Semiconductor, has a sales revenue of only 1/10 of that of Qualcomm, the world's largest IC design company, in 2010. The revenue gap with the world's 10th IC design company is also More than 4 billion yuan. The domestic integrated circuit industry urgently needs to build an “aircraft carrier” that can compete with international semiconductor giants.

Finally, with the help of the country's R&D and innovation, the domestic integrated circuit industry has made remarkable breakthroughs in the core technologies of many fields in the past 10 years, and it has also been used in mobile phone chips, IC card chips, and digital TVs. Chips, communications chips, multimedia chips and other product areas have achieved innovative results. However, we should also clearly see that in the general-purpose CPU, memory, microcontroller, digital signal processor and other large-scale general-purpose integrated circuit products, the domestic basic is still blank.

These integrated circuit products are also all dependent on imports. As for the domestic integrated circuit industry, its competitiveness in the R&D and industrialization of core technologies and products still needs to be further strengthened.