China's integrated circuit industry is the first to break 100 billion

In recent years, China's integrated circuit manufacturing industry has developed rapidly, and its annual output value has exceeded 100 billion yuan. Affected by favorable factors, China is welcoming a new wave of integrated circuit investment. However, experts said that the core technology of the integrated circuit industry is subject to the low market share of people and products, and the short-term development of supporting equipment and materials remains to be solved. The annual output value of integrated circuits is the first to break 100 billion. Chen Xian, vice chairman of the China Semiconductor Industry Association, said at the "20th China IC Manufacturing Annual Conference 2017" held recently that the current situation of the domestic integrated circuit manufacturing industry is very good. The output value of the integrated circuit manufacturing industry exceeded 100 billion yuan for the first time, reaching 112.69 billion yuan. In the first half of this year, the integrated circuit manufacturing industry continued to maintain a good growth momentum, with a year-on-year growth of 25.6% and an industrial scale of 57.1 billion yuan. The industry believes that the rapid development of the chip manufacturing industry is the result of the release of major national science and technology achievements, and this high growth also shows the lack of investment in chip manufacturing in the past. At present, China's annual import of chips is as high as 230 billion US dollars, and the local chip industry is still unable to meet domestic needs. According to industry insiders, in 2013, China's local market consumed 80.8 billion US dollars of integrated circuit products, local production of 50% or 40.4 billion US dollars as an example. Assuming the chip design industry's gross profit is 40%, the manufacturing output value is 28.9 billion US dollars. If the price of each 12-inch wafer is $2,890, an annual output of 10 million wafers is required, which means that the monthly capacity will reach 830,000. If calculated at 90% capacity utilization, the monthly capacity needs to reach about 930,000 pieces. Now China's actual production capacity is about 200,000 pieces per month, and the monthly capacity gap is 730,000 pieces. In the past two years, China is welcoming a new round of wafer manufacturing investment and construction boom. According to the International Semiconductor Equipment and Materials Association (SEMI), between 2016 and 2017, there are 19 new fabs in the world, including 10 in mainland China. As the world's major electronics manufacturing country, domestic chips will have a huge replacement space. Chen Wei, vice president of Shanghai Huahong Hongli, said that the concept of artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming popular, and integrated circuit chips are an important hardware foundation behind it. With the rise of artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and other industries, "connection + perception + intelligence" will drive the development of the semiconductor industry. Industrial structural defects gradually emerged Although the output value of domestic chip manufacturing industry is growing and investment is active, the current industrial situation is not optimistic. The integrated circuit has been China's largest import commodity for many years, and a large part of the rapid growth of the chip manufacturing industry recently comes from the growth of foreign companies in China. At present, among the top ten chip manufacturing companies in China, the number of foreign companies accounts for half, and the proportion of revenue accounts for 56%. Domestic enterprises also lag significantly behind international competitors in advanced process technology. In the opinion of experts, the current domestic wafer manufacturing technology is behind the world's leading level for 2 generations, and there is no large-scale integrated device manufacturing (IDM) enterprise. With the increasing number of factories built, the competition faced by domestic integrated circuit manufacturers will become increasingly fierce, but the development of process technology is becoming more and more difficult. At the same time, the price fluctuations of equipment and materials are also growing. By 2020, the industry needs 300,000 professional and technical personnel, and there is currently a huge talent gap. In addition, they often face overseas technical barriers. Ren Aiguang, director of the IC Division of the Electronic Information Division of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that the domestic chip manufacturing industry has made progress in recent years, but the two problems have not changed. First, the core technology is subject to people, and second, the core product market share needs to be improved. According to Wei Shaojun, director of the Microelectronics Institute of Tsinghua University, China's IC manufacturing industry has long been based on "OEM" as the main development model, over-reliance on design capabilities, lack of in-depth understanding of products, and mostly staying at the passive service level. "The structural defects of China's integrated circuit industry have gradually emerged. Whether the industrial development model with foundry as the main feature is still suitable for China's development is worth discussing." Integrated circuit equipment and materials are also the bottleneck restricting the healthy development of the chip manufacturing industry. In the opinion of experts, most of the domestically produced products are concentrated in the low-end. Although the domestic production of wafer production lines has started, most orders have been divided by international equipment companies. Wang Xiaolong, an analyst at the domestic semiconductor research institute, said that due to the lack of opportunities to enter the production line for trial verification, local companies are difficult to become the preferred supplier of manufacturing companies. The development of the IDM model is at the right time . The development of the United States, South Korea and Taiwan has proved that the development of the integrated circuit industry must have a strong chip manufacturing industry. Correspondingly, in recent years, the EU and Japan have gradually become weaker in the integrated circuit industry, which proves that there is no strong chip manufacturing support. "In order for the IC industry to develop, it must have strong wafer manufacturing capabilities." Ren Aiguang said that during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, the domestic integrated circuit industry should pay more attention to open development and integrate into the global integrated circuit industry system. Second, it should pay more attention to innovation and development, and focus on cultivating corporate innovation subjects. Third, we must pay more attention to development. Wei Shaojun believes that it is timely to vigorously develop the integrated device manufacturing (IDM) model. The transition from “work-centered” to “product-centric” is the key to the transformation and upgrading of China's integrated circuit manufacturing industry. The integrated circuit products with international market competitiveness and independent control are the ultimate goal pursued by China's integrated circuit industry. In essence, the IC industry is still manufacturing, and the core of manufacturing is the supply chain. Ye Tianchun, director of the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the development of China's semiconductor industry must first reduce costs, and the protection of the supply chain is very important. Second, the industry chain must go ahead, this is the healthy industrial ecology. Therefore, it is necessary to speed up the establishment of the domestic integrated circuit industry chain ecosystem, and only in this way can lay the foundation for the long-term development of the industry. "Compared with other regions, China's local foundry companies still have a lot of room for improvement in production capacity and manufacturing technology." Chen Wei said that the domestic chip manufacturing industry should focus on global markets and hot applications, and develop differentiated features.