Realizing two major breakthroughs, the integrated circuit industry has ushered in a broad space for development

At the 2019 World Manufacturing Conference held in Hefei, Anhui on September 20-23, Changxin Storage announced that the DRAM production line was put into production. This marks a major breakthrough in the field of memory chips in China. Hefei will rely on Changxin Storage to introduce chip design, packaging and testing, equipment materials and intelligent terminal projects to build an airport integrated circuit supporting industrial park.

A number of participating experts said that the integrated circuit industry is a strategic, basic and leading industry that supports economic and social development and safeguards national security. With the maturity of technologies in 5G, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, etc., China's integrated circuit industry will usher in a broad space for development. At present, China's integrated circuit industry's "three industries" (sealed testing, design, manufacturing) accounted for a reasonable proportion, adjusted to the golden ratio of 3:4:3. It is expected that China's IC market will continue to grow steadily in the next three years.

Major breakthrough

According to reports, at the 2019 World Manufacturing Conference held in Hefei, Anhui on September 20, Changxin Storage Memory Chip (DRAM) self-manufacturing project with a total investment of about 150 billion yuan was announced, and its 10nm level is synchronized with international mainstream DRAM products. The first generation of 8Gb DDR4 debuted. On September 2, Ziguang Storage, a subsidiary of Ziguang Group, announced that it has begun mass production of China's first 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory based on Xtacking architecture to meet the needs of mainstream market applications such as solid-state drives and embedded storage.

DRAM is a dynamic random access memory chip, which is a main memory (memory). As a common system memory, DRAM has the characteristics of high capacity, large bandwidth, low power consumption, short delay, low cost, etc. It is widely used in PC, mobile phone, server and other fields, and is the single chip category with the largest output value of the integrated circuit industry. . The external storage NAND Flash is mainly used for code storage and data storage, and is widely used in the fields of consumer electronics, mobile communication, network communication, personal computers, servers, and the like.

The commissioning of Changjiang Storage and Changxin Storage is of great significance and is expected to break the monopoly of the storage market by overseas manufacturers. According to DRAM exchange data, in the global DRAM market in 2018, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron accounted for 44%, 29% and 22% respectively, and the three companies together accounted for 95% of the global market share; despite the global NAND storage market concentration It is lower than the DRAM market, but it is still controlled by leading companies. The market share of Samsung, Toshiba, Micron, Western Digital, SK Hynix, and Intel is 35%, 19%, 13%, 15%, 10%, and 7%, respectively, and the combined market share of the six companies is 99%.

Chuan Cai Securities pointed out that in 2018, China's integrated circuit import product classification, storage is still the largest import product, accounting for 36%. At present, China's IC market is still dominated by imports, and the localization rate is low. In particular, the localization rate of DRAM, NAND memory, computer and server CPU is almost zero. With the development of the integrated circuit industry, China will have a significant increase in the high-end field of integrated circuits, and there will be huge space for the import and replacement of the integrated circuit industry in the future. Guosheng Securities said that the data explosion growth is the core of the growth of the memory industry, and the source of data growth is the number of device connections and the number of devices generated. This will drive data processing capabilities - the corresponding DRAM requirements, the amount of data storage corresponds to the needs of NAND Flash. In the past five years, the growth in device connectivity has come mainly from consumer electronics devices such as smartphones. The next phase of IoT devices and cars will be the core driver for the number of device connections. According to IC Insight's forecast, the fastest segment of the compound growth rate from 2018 to 2023 is still the memory chip, with a growth rate of 7.8%, which is 1% higher than the overall semiconductor market.

Broad space

Experts said that the world's largest market demand is the advantage of China's development of the integrated circuit industry. With the empowerment of new technologies such as 5G, Internet of Things, AI, and cloud computing to the manufacturing industry, China's memory chip industry will usher in a broad space for development. According to the data disclosed by the General Administration of Customs, from 2014 to 2017, the annual import volume of China's integrated circuits was 217.6 billion US dollars, 229.9 billion US dollars, 272 billion US dollars and 260.1 billion US dollars; the import value exceeded 20 billion US dollars for the first time in 2018, actually 312.58 billion US dollars, an increase of 19.8%.

In recent years, the growth rate of China's integrated circuit market has led the global market. According to the statistics of China Semiconductor Industry Association, in 2017, 2018 and January-May 2019, China's IC industry sales reached 541.13 billion yuan, 653.2 billion yuan and 304.82 billion yuan respectively, up 24.8%, 20.7% and 11.8 respectively. %. According to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics Association (WSTS) data, the global semiconductor market reached 411.2 billion US dollars in 2017, a growth rate of 21.6%; in the second half of 2018, due to the decline in memory prices and other factors, the global semiconductor market grew by 13.7%. To 468.778 million US dollars. According to data released by SIA, the global semiconductor market in the first half of this year fell 14.5% year-on-year.

A senior IC analyst told China Securities Journal that "China's semiconductor market will maintain a high growth trend faster than the global market. This industry (mainly in the design field) has shifted significantly to the Chinese market. The domestic downstream terminal market demand is good, including Smartphones, computers, security, etc."

Xu Tao, chief analyst of CITIC Securities, said, "The demand in the semiconductor market is mainly concentrated in the fields of smart phones, high-performance computing, automobiles, and the Internet of Things. From the perspective of the terminal, it will be driven by the release of 5G new machines and the demand for replacement. It is expected to be 2020. In the cloud industry, cloud vendors’ capital expenditures rebounded in the second quarter from the second quarter to 2020, and the 2020 is about the data center hardware performance. In addition, automotive electronics and IoT demand It is expected to grow rapidly, and the boost in demand will drive the semiconductor industry back to growth."

Coordinated development

At present, there are some weak links in China's IC industry that need to be strengthened. For example, the self-sufficiency rate of core equipment and key materials is low, the process is still to be pursued, and some core components cannot find an ideal alternative.

Ding Wenwu, president of the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Co., Ltd. pointed out in the above forum that China's IC industry has developed well in recent years, but there is still a gap between the industry scale and technology level and the international advanced level. An integrated circuit industry chain supply system should be built, and each link is organically combined with users, especially domestic equipment and materials.

Ren Aiguang, deputy director of the Department of Electronic Information of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that the next step in the development of the integrated circuit industry needs to be "four adherences." First of all, we must persist in upgrading the innovation capability of the integrated circuit industry and promote the high-quality development of the industry. Continuously improve the upstream and downstream collaborative innovation capabilities of the industry chain, and actively build a complete industrial system from basic research, supply technology, equipment materials to complete machine applications. Promote the high-quality development of the integrated circuit industry. Second, we must persist in stimulating market vitality and promoting industrial integration and development. Focusing on the traditional market with a large amount of coverage, grasping emerging markets such as cloud computing, big data, and the Internet of Things, and accelerating the formation of an integrated circuit industry innovation system that is enterprise-oriented, market-oriented, and deep integration of production, education, and research, further stimulates market vitality. Build a new pattern of industrial integration and development. Third, we must persist in improving the construction of the industrial chain and comprehensively enhance the comprehensive competitiveness of the industry. Further promote the optimization and upgrading of the overall level of the integrated circuit industry, drive the integrated circuit backbone enterprises to become bigger and stronger and the rapid development of small and medium-sized enterprises, promote the development of the integrated circuit industry from cluster development to clusters, and comprehensively enhance the international competitiveness of the integrated circuit industry. Finally, we must persist in optimizing the business environment and building a good industrial development order. Further strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights and promote the gathering of industrial factors such as talent market, technology and capital.

Ding Wenwu pointed out that since 2014, the development of the integrated circuit industry has been very enthusiastic. But there may be some repetitiveness, especially low-level homogenization competition. It is recommended that relevant ministries and commissions strengthen management in this area and make overall plans. In terms of IC talent training, Ding Wenwu said, “There are too many talents and high-end talents. Enterprises are digging talents and the cost of digging is getting higher and higher. The key is to make the quantity and quality of talents.