The cancellation of 129.1 billion chip orders, my country is facing practical pressure, and the situation is confusing
Wafers are indispensable devices for industrial development, and China is the country with the most complete industrial categories in the world, and the demand for wafers also ranks first in the world. It is reported that in 2022, the total global chip sales will be 4 trillion yuan, and China's chip imports will support more than 28 trillion yuan, accounting for more than 70% of the global chip market.
Although China occupies more than 70% of the chip market share, China's voice in the chip market is not high, and even Huawei chips have appeared"Stuck neck"situation.
In the early years, the former United States accumulated a large number of semiconductor technology, integrated circuit equipment and integrated circuit materials"In a word"。
Since then, the integrated circuit industry chain has changed, the United States integrated circuit equipment is produced in Europe, the integrated circuit foundry is in East Asia, the former United States occupies the top of the integrated circuit industry chain, and makes a lot of money by patents alone.
In order to break this situation, China has accelerated the research and development of local wafers, and created a large number of wafer R&D bases and wafer foundries to achieve the independence and counterattack of national wafers.
After these years of development, China's ferrule industry has undergone earth-shaking changes. First, SMIC has mastered the production process of 14nm and 28nm wafers, and has begun to develop the 7nm wafer process.
In addition, SMIC has invested heavily in the construction of four wafer foundries, namely Shenzhen SMIC, Beijing SMIC, Dongfang SMIC and Xiqing SMIC. The wafer production capacity of the four fabs is between 40,000 wafer-month and 100,000-wafer-month. After the completion of these four factories, China's wafer import scale will be greatly reduced.
In fact, it is also true that the scale of China's wafer imports has dropped significantly. It is reported that in 2022, China's chip imports will decrease by 97 billion pieces year-on-year. In the first quarter of 2023, China's chip imports will decrease by 32.1 billion pieces. In other words, as of 2022, China's chip imports have decreased by 129.1 billion pieces.
Whether it is the completion of SMIC's fourth factory or the cumulative reduction of China's chip imports by 129.1 billion, it shows that China's chip industry has entered a decisive stage. Obviously, China has gradually gotten rid of the restrictions of foreign chips and entered the stage of independent research and development.
Just when we were rejoicing at the advent of domestic electronic chips, a realistic situation also emerged. A few days ago, the R&D team of OPPO chip Zheku announced its disbandment, and the research and development of domestic chips is tantamount to a basin of cold water.
In order to meet Zheku's high hopes for OPPO, OPPO hopes that the Zheku team can develop domestic chips with strong performance like Huawei's HiSilicon team. To this end, OPPO has invested more than 10 billion in research and development, which is very rare among mobile phone manufacturers.
Many people are puzzled: Huawei has successfully independently developed a Kirin chip with strong performance, Loongson Zhongke can also develop a world-class Loongson 3A6000, and Changdian Technology has also achieved 4nm chip packaging technology, which fully shows that China's chip research and development scale has entered a stage, and independent research and development of chips is no longer a problem. In this case, why did Aopu disband the Zheku team?
In this regard, we must recognize a reality, that is, China's integrated circuit technology has achieved a breakthrough, but we want to be completely independent of Europe and the United States, which is unrealistic.
First of all, a lot of money is invested in R&D wafers, and more than 10 billion yuan is just a threshold. In the past few decades, there have been many tablet R&D companies in China, but only a few companies such as Huawei and Loongson Zhongke can reach scale. Huawei is committed to R&D, spending more than 130 billion yuan annually. Loongson Zhongke focuses on this industry, and all funds are invested in the research and development of PC chips.
Although OPPO, Xiaomi and other companies intend to do wafer research and development, these two companies are not capitalized, and their core business is electronic products.
Second, integrated circuit research and development requires advanced EDA tools, and China's EDA tools still seem to rely on Europe and the United States. It is reported that Huawei's Kirin 990, Kirin 9000 and other advanced chip design tools are the EDA tools of American companies. As we all know, Kirin 990 is a 7nm chip, and Kirin 9000 is a 5nm chip, which means that Laomei's EDA tools can meet the design needs of 5nm and 7nm chips.
In contrast, the domestic EDA tool is still stuck at the level of 14nm, and Huawei and its partners have not yet jointly developed it. It can be seen that if you want to develop a more advanced chip manufacturing process, it is difficult for the national R&D team to get rid of the old American EDA tool.
In addition, many domestic chip companies just want to make quick money and do not make realistic chips, which is also worthy of our vigilance. It is reported that since 2022, more than 5,000 chip companies have disappeared in China, many of which are adhering to it'It's better to buy than to build'The concept of only thinking about making quick money leads to a waste of resources for China's chip development, which is a very cruel status quo.
Objectively speaking, there are very few integrated circuit companies like Huawei and Loongson Zhongke, and there are not many companies like OPPO and Xiaomi that dare to try. A considerable number of tablet companies only think about short-term profits, and eventually lose their money and become the dust of history.
Finally, we must fully realize a reality: the development of the integrated circuit industry depends on an enterprise, or even a country, and it is difficult to form a complete industrial chain. Therefore, when we make breakthroughs in wafer technology, we must not be complacent and dismissive, thinking that wafer business such as R&D, foundry, and packaging can be completed by ourselves. In the early days of the globalization of the wafer market, we still need to learn and cooperate, and only then will we have more say.