The new era of integrated circuits in China

As an emerging strategic industry, ICs received great attention during the two sessions this year and caused a lot of discussion. In the face of national support and various favorable policies, the reform of the integrated circuit industry is in sight, and will enter a new stage of development, and it is expected to show itself in the world market.

The forthcoming introduction of a new round of support policies for the national integrated circuit industry will inevitably bring great benefits to the integrated circuit industry and will help to further consolidate the leading position of the integrated circuit industry in strategic emerging industries.

The state’s support for the integrated circuit industry has reached the highest level in ten years. In the report on the work of the two governments this year, the focus of work in 2014 on the “Innovation to support and lead the optimization and upgrading of economic structure” section puts forward the “establishment of a new industry innovation and entrepreneurship platform in the new generation of mobile communications, integrated circuits, big data, advanced manufacturing, New energy, new materials, and other aspects will catch up and lead the industry in the future." The introduction of localization policies has not only brought about the best fighters for the layout of related companies in the industry, but also brought great opportunities for the emerging companies.

Faced with such superior policy support, the IC industry will certainly seize the opportunity to actively transform and upgrade. In recent years, with the advancement of Chinese ic manufacturing and packaging technology, semiconductor process technology has entered an innovative development mode. Under this new development model, the technological gap between mature and emerging companies is not so obvious. Competition is more about overall development capabilities and the speed of entering the market. Some domestic semiconductor equipment companies have succeeded in breaking the monopoly of international giants and achieved records of mass production of international and domestic advanced chip production lines. In addition, funds will be concentrated, human resources will be pooled, policies will be adjusted, and advantageous companies will be encouraged to integrate and merge. Through this approach, they will become bigger and stronger, and they will strive to gain a foothold in the international market.

The tilt of the national policy will make the growth of China's integrated circuit market possible in the future. In the future, policies will also promote the establishment of a diversified and multi-channel investment system for science and technology and widely attract social funds. Enterprises should seize the opportunity, attach importance to nurturing core production processes and core application technologies, and maintain their core competitiveness.

Peng Hongbing: The characteristics of the new era of the integrated circuit industry and the future development The current integrated circuit industry has entered a new historical period with obvious phase characteristics. In the 90s of last century, China's integrated circuit industry established the industrialization foundation through the promotion of major national projects. In the 21st century, it took ten years for us to create a relatively good environment for the development of the industry in terms of the policy environment to adapt to the current Chinese characteristics. After 2010, more efforts have been made in the development of national special research projects for innovation and development. In the past twenty years of experience in the industrialization of the integrated circuit industry, we have scored many achievements and have obvious deficiencies.

The integrated circuit industry has entered a new era. There are several main features: First, downstream of the integrated circuit industry. Many changes have taken place in the new technology field. For example, mobile internet, cloud computing, and big data have brought new forms of industry to the industry. A lot of new attempts. Second, information security has brought great challenges to the industry. Everyone's concern includes information security, information disclosure, safeguarding consumer information security, national information security, national defense construction safety, etc. This is a great challenge to industry development, and it is also a great opportunity. Third, the country has expanded domestic demand and has continuously introduced policies. The 18th National Congress proposed industrialization, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization. The development of a new generation of information technology has provided the industry with a vast market space. The country has provided more opportunities for industrial development and the challenges are also very severe.

We summarize that the integrated circuit industry has invested more than 100 billion yuan in technology over the past decade. Compared to large international companies, the industry’s investment is only 1/6 of that of Intel. Our chip design industry claims 50,000 elites, which is twice that of Qualcomm’s. However, the output is only 60% of Qualcomm. The labor productivity of the whole industry is equivalent to 1/4 of a company. This is our existing ability. We can see that compared with future development needs and greater prospects, industrial capabilities are very limited. According to the requirements of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, we should firmly grasp the IC industry and achieve leapfrog development. Conducted centralized investigations and opened forums in Shanghai, Guangdong and other places, and various departments reached a high degree of consensus.

In the future, we will advance the work in the following areas: First, establish long-term coordination mechanisms among various departments to form a ten-year and twenty-year development plan that will upgrade the integrated circuit industry into a complete national strategy; and secondly, it will effectively solve the problems that plague the development of the industry. Insufficient investment and unsustainable bottlenecks form a long-term, sustained, and large-scale investment mechanism. Third, it strengthens the integration of industrial resources. Recently, the global integrated circuit industry has undergone many mergers and acquisitions, both in manufacturing and design, and the industrial concentration has been further concentrated. Various domestic departments and agencies have introduced many policies. The Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and Beijing have developed faster, but there are also divergence trends. It is hoped that policies will guide the concentration of resources and improve the efficiency of industrial development. Fourth, it will further improve and implement the industrial policies that have been promulgated and provide continuous support for industrial development. Finally, our relevant departments have reported the future mid- to long-term development plan to the State Council. There will be some results in the near future. We hope that the leading expert entrepreneurs who are on the scene will pay attention to supporting the development of the industry. I believe that through the efforts of all of you, China's IC industry will have a very good future.

Deng Zhonghan talks about “China Core”: Standardization should become the future national strategy The 46-year-old NPC deputy, Chairman of Zhongxing Microelectronics Co., Ltd. Deng Zhonghan, has accomplished many glories in the first half of his life: He was also awarded the 130th anniversary of the establishment of the University of California, Berkeley. The first person of science, engineering, and business sciences; he and the team developed the first "Star One" chip with completely independent intellectual property rights, ending the "China Coreless" history; in 2005, China Star Microelectronics was He was listed on the Nasdaq stock market in the United States. In 2009, he became the youngest academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. At the moment, he is doing another major event for the rest of his life: to safeguard national security, social stability and safe production, and to promote safety video Monitor digital audio and video codec national standards. In the future, using this standard to implement a networked camera, it is possible to achieve the following functions: At an airport, a black man leaves a suspected explosive in the early hours of the morning and will automatically report an alarm if it exceeds one minute or two minutes.

As the vice chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, Deng Zhonghan said that standardization should become the future national development strategy. “Only by forming a national-level technical standard system can we guide and configure various types of market resources and jointly complete national tasks. At the same time, we can also set national standards. Gradually rise to international standards and have the right to speak internationally."

"4G mobile phones are basically foreign chips."

I: What kind of advice did you put forward at the Second Session of the Twelfth National People's Congress?

Deng Zhonghan: My suggestion this year is to “given the role of standardization and agglomeration and realize the leap-forward development of the integrated circuit industry”. In the process of participating in the government, I further learned that regarding the development of our national science and technology and integrated circuit industries, especially since the financial crisis, some important changes have taken place in the international situation and domestic environment, industry, and technology. My main suggestion is to create and plan for emerging market needs through the formulation of national standards, so as to effectively allocate market resources, and then achieve leapfrog development in core technologies in some countries.

The author: You mentioned that the national science and technology and integrated circuit industry, in the end what kind of situation and changes, prompted you to make such a proposal?

Deng Zhonghan: China's annual import of chips has reached more than two hundred billion US dollars, which exceeds the amount of oil imports. China is ostensibly the world's largest integrated circuit market, but a large part of this is due to the transfer of international industries. It can be imagined that if Foxconn moves away from mainland China, this part of the market will also be lost. Although China has invested heavily in the IC industry over the past few years, the gap between us and the advanced level in foreign countries is still widening. The core technology can't be bought.

I: Can you give a specific example?

Deng Zhonghan: For example, mobile phones, domestic own technology may account for about 20%. Our company does a part in China, and some old mobile phones are exported to relatively low-end foreign markets. However, at present, there is no domestic manufacturer of any 4G chip, and all of them are foreign manufacturers. Later, the 4G mobile phone is basically a foreign chip.

I: What do you think is the main reason behind this kind of core technology? How to promote development?

Deng Zhonghan: Many leaders and experts have talked about the “two skins” problem, that is, the problem of the disconnection between economy and science and technology. In other words, the achievements China has made in the field of science and technology are not reflected in the promotion of economic development. In recent years, the average annual growth rate of research investment in China has reached 20%, but there have been few breakthrough original results, and the conversion rate of scientific and technological achievements has been less than 20%. China's high-tech products mainly rely on foreign countries. At the same time, some outstanding independent innovation achievements in China have not been fully applied.

I think that if a country can not make breakthroughs in a long period of time when it invests heavily in some key areas, we may have to change our minds and change our perspective. This is precisely in line with the proposal put forward at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee. The market is a decisive factor in allocating resources, that is, not from the perspective of planning, guidance, and pure investment from the country, but from the market and from another perspective. Is the demand angle.

The market is two invisible hands, one for and one for. Talent and technology are all factors of production and belong to the supply, but the demand for this great potential has not been tapped in our country. Due to the disadvantages of funds, technology, and management in China, it is difficult for Chinese companies to compete with foreign giants. Our opportunities are more likely in the emerging domestic market. Therefore, it is necessary to use both the “government” and “market” hands to create new requirements for “leapfrogging” and to develop integrated circuit industries.

I: Can you explain it in detail?

Deng Zhonghan: For example, several important periods in the rapid development of China's integrated circuit industry are closely related to the implementation of independent national standards and the creation of huge market demand at that time. The promotion of second-generation ID cards adopts national standards for self-developed IC cards, and a group of outstanding IC companies have emerged. The related technologies have also been adopted in other fields such as bank cards, social insurance cards, and mobile phone SIM cards. In the field of mobile communications, The promotion of TD-SCDMA national standards directly promotes the development of integrated communications companies such as Spreadtrum Communications in the domestic and international markets.

Therefore, it is suggested that in areas where national defense and national security are not restricted by WTO rules, and China has certain advantages, we must bring into play the characteristics of the socialist concentration of resources, cultivate and form national-level technologies and standards, and formulate and publicize the promotion. Apply timetables and roadmaps of relevant national standards to guide and allocate market, social and government resources to focus areas. The use of standards to promote applications, to create applications for the market, create demand from the market, and ultimately achieve the leap-forward development of integrated circuits and related industries.

In 2009, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and China Star Microelectronics began to jointly formulate SVAC national standards for China's Skynet project. For this reason, we invested more than 700 million yuan. Why are you willing to invest so much money to do this? First, the objectives required for security monitoring, intelligent processing of identification and image data, and various aspects of emerging technologies are all areas in the world, and we are very interested in investing. In 2011, SVAC national standards were promulgated, and dozens of pilot projects were carried out in Shanxi, Hebei, and Guangdong, and achieved significant results. The data shows that in 2012 the market scale has reached 300 billion yuan, and it is expected to grow at a rate of 20% per year, driving the rapid development of 78 enterprises.

"Developed an internationally recognized national technical standards system"

The author: Since this year, the National Security Council and the Central Cyber ​​Security and Informationization Leading Group have been established. From the perspective of national security governance, how do you interpret this?

Deng Zhonghan: Our country’s information security has been building for more than a decade. In the past, it was generally controlled by a Politburo Standing Committee. This time it is the three Standing Committee members. In his speech, General Secretary Xi mentioned in particular that building an Internet power must have excellent technology. I think this has captured the fundamentals and shows that President Xi has attached great importance to the security of online information.

There are spears and shields for anything. "Spears" are often caused by factors such as society and international relations. There is no way to control them; we must have sophisticated "shields" and methods to ensure national information security. Technology is "shield." A lot of information leaked before, precisely because the standards of many products are in the hands of foreigners. In the current severe situation of network security, developing software and hardware with independent intellectual property rights is a shield to protect information security; and formulating an internationally recognized national technical standards system to allow products from other countries to use the standards formulated by China can be molded. Spears have the right to speak in the world.

Author: In this field of national technical standards, which areas should be designed first?

Deng Zhonghan: First of all, it should be a defense system. In this system, any foreign-imported chips should be avoided. We can only form powerful systems through military standards and through national standards. In addition, including offices like the government, including some robust encryption and decryption, fingerprint identification, and authentication, are some emerging systems. These systems are just as good as second-generation ID cards.

I think that the basic construction of information networks should be used as a starting point to form a national technical standard system. Only the formation of a national-level technical standard system can guide and configure various types of market resources and jointly accomplish national tasks. This standardized approach should become a strategy for future national development. At the same time, we can gradually raise our national standards to international standards, have the right to speak in the international community, and at the same time complete the upgrading of the information industry and information security and transformation and development.

I: Do you think there is a road map for this kind of upgrading and catching up and competing for international discourse rights?

Deng Zhonghan: In the past ten years, we should say that in the field of chip design and manufacturing, and some core technology areas, we have reached the international advanced ranks. In the next decade, if there are major initiatives, such as increasing investment, the State Council has recently issued a national outline of the IC industry plan. We hope to launch it soon.

In addition, if these resources, manpower, and energy are concentrated in some emerging areas through national standards, the largest industrial concentration group will be formed in China and the leading position will be mentioned. These companies continue to earn money and invest in a virtuous circle. In the future, we hope that by 2030, ICs can be at the most advanced level in the world.

* Zhongxing Microelectronics Co., Ltd.:

In 1999, many Ph.D. entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley were founded in Beijing Zhongguancun Science Park.

In 2005, Vimicro was successfully listed on the Nasdaq Securities Market in the United States and became the first Chinese chip design company with independent intellectual property rights listed on NASDAQ.

China Star Microelectronics Co., Ltd. has initiated and undertook the National Strategic Project "Starlight China Core Project" and is committed to the development, design, and industrialization of digital multimedia chips.

Currently, "Starlight" digital multimedia chip products have been successfully promoted to the global market, and are widely used in high-speed multimedia applications such as personal computers, broadband, mobile communications and information appliances, and sales have covered Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea. In 16 countries and regions, customers include Sony, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, Philips, Fujitsu, Logitech, Lenovo, Bird, ZTE and many other well-known domestic and foreign companies, occupying more than 60% of the world's computer graphics input chip market share.