Development status and opportunities and challenges of integrated circuit design

With the continuous development of the integrated circuit industry, the output value of chips has soared year after year, and the import volume of chips in China is also rising. According to the data of China Customs, in 2018, China imported 417.57 billion chips, an increase of 10.8% year-on-year, and the import amount reached 312.058 billion US dollars, with a year-on-year growth of 19.8%. This is the first time that China's chip imports have exceeded 300 billion US dollars, ranking first in China's import products. Although China's chip market share is small, its development momentum is very strong. At the 2019 China Core Application Innovation Summit Forum, Chang Junfeng, Secretary General of Shenzhen Semiconductor Industry Association, predicted that in 2019, China's integrated circuit design industry sales will exceed 300 billion yuan, with 1780 chip design enterprises. Shenzhen design industry will continue to lead the country and break through the 100 billion mark, In the global semiconductor market of US $500 billion, China's share is still insufficient. However, opportunities and challenges coexist for domestic chips. Under the situation of national large fund and global chip industry transfer, China's core industry is stepping into an accelerated period.

Development status of integrated circuit design industry in China

Chip industry is an industry with long cycle and large investment, which can not be achieved in a short time. The development of enterprises is also greatly affected by the market environment. The development of chip industry needs the joint promotion of the state, enterprises and talents, which is not urgent. Mr. Chang Junfeng, Secretary General of Shenzhen Semiconductor Industry Association, said that the current trade deficit of the chip industry is very large. In 2018, the global output value of integrated circuits is 477.9 billion, and the import volume is expected to exceed 300 billion in 2019. Taking Shenzhen integrated design industry as an example, China lacks high-end chips, and there are also areas that are missing, including IP, EDA, materials and equipment The current situation of domestic industry. In the large international environment, the trade war between China and the United States has hit the areas where China lacks core technology, which also reflects the gap between China's science and technology and that of the United States. In fact, as early as 2000, China's government began to focus on the layout of integrated circuits, including market-oriented operation, policy, 2014 special integrated circuit policy, and building a powerful integrated circuit country by 2025. The focus is to promote the development and construction of the neck area. At present, the number of cities participating in the integrated circuit industry in our country is gradually increasing, which shows that our country attaches great importance to the integrated circuit industry. Mr. Chang Junfeng believes that if the city wants to develop the integrated circuit industry, the most important thing is to build a good industrial environment and strengthen the construction of professional talents. Only by doing these basic projects well, funds and enterprises will follow, and the landing market will increase.

The state is also increasing financial support for the integrated circuit industry. Since 2014, the state has formed a huge industrial investment from a large fund of more than 100 billion to various fund scale investments. Taking Shenzhen as an example, Shenzhen's IC design is very advantageous, and Shenzhen has special funds to support the development of the industry. The global semiconductor industry grew by 13.7% last year, reaching 468.8 billion US dollars. According to this year's forecast, the growth rate of global market scale will decline slightly, among which the collapse of memory chips is an important reason. The ranking of global semiconductor enterprises is still dominated by Europe and the United States. In addition to Hisilicon, there are basically no semiconductor enterprises in China to enter the global top ranking. One of the highlights of this year is that Intel regained the leading position lost for two years. In fact, the industrial market is mainly in the Asia Pacific region, with a scale of 60% and that of the U.S. market is 22%.

With the evolution of Moore's law, the performance growth of process is not as fast as before, which is the characteristics of the post Moore era. Mr. Chang Junfeng, Secretary General of Shenzhen Semiconductor Industry Association, said that silicon technology may have reached a bottleneck. At present, the number of integrated circuit enterprises in China is growing rapidly. From the perspective of global semiconductor industry development, semiconductor enterprises are falling into the wave of mergers and acquisitions This is different from the previous scale M & A. However, there will be no large-scale merger of output value. Mr. Chang Junfeng mentioned that non innovative wafer plants are also facing the risk of being eliminated by the market, and the production capacity demand of the old first generation and second generation is reduced. With the development of new applications, new requirements for new processes such as compound semiconductor and third-generation semiconductor technology are facing great challenges.

Opportunities and challenges coexist

Looking back on the development of China's semiconductor industry, the development of China's semiconductor industry can be simply divided into three stages. The first stage is the era of the so-called Research Institute. We started not long after the United States, but our research and development was slower than that of the United States. The second stage is represented by the 908 and 909 projects, and the whole industrialization development has entered the industrialization stage guided by the government. In the third stage, after 2000, chip design enterprises, especially those represented by Shenzhen, began to rise, including a large number of start-up IC design enterprises, such as SMIC international, which came back from Silicon Valley and began to develop and grow. Mr. Chang Junfeng, Secretary General of Shenzhen Semiconductor Industry Association, said that the three stages of integrated circuits, from horizontal industry to manufacturing, sealing and testing, design, equipment, equipment and materials, have made considerable progress. We must also see the advanced nature of semiconductor industry, the materials and equipment used in it, which is no less difficult than designing and manufacturing integrated circuits.