***2023 Server Computer CPU Industry Entry ReportThe development of China's computer CPU industry has entered the "fast lane", with a total of 6The average growth rate of 91% is growing steadily and rapidly, and it is expected that the size of China's CPU market will reach 710 by 20277.5 billion yuan. With the continuous increase in technological innovation and R&D investment of China's local computer CPU companies, the structure of the computer CPU market in China and overseas has undergone significant changes, and Chinese enterprises are gradually entering people's field of vision and becoming a high-profile part of the global chip industry.
1. Definition of computer CPU industry
Computer CPU is usually composed of a control unit, an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and registers, which is an integrated circuit responsible for interpreting and computing instructions in computer programs and controlling computer operations, which has an important impact on the performance and operation efficiency of computers. With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, CPU, as the computing and control core of computers, is expected to penetrate into new application scenarios such as automated production line control, industrial Internet of Things, human-computer interaction and machine learning, and the potential market and demand have a steady expansion trend.
2. Computer CPU industry classification
According to the instruction set architecture used by computer CPUs, the current mainstream CPUs can be divided into CPUs using MIPS architecture, x86 architecture, ARM architecture and RISC-V architecture.
3. Characteristics of the computer CPU industry
The characteristics of China's computer CPU industry include: foreign companies dominate the market, and the Chinese and overseas markets are highly competitive;Strong technical dependence and high resistance to self-development;The risk of customer concentration is high, which affects the profit level of the enterprise. With the gradual rise of domestic CPUs, China's computer CPU industry will move towards autonomy and industrialization.
Foreign companies dominate the market, and the competition between China and overseas markets is fierce
The global general-purpose processor market is dominated by two ecosystems: Wintel (Microsoft and Intel) and AA (Google and Arm). In 2022, Intel accounted for 7077% share, compared to 19 for AMD8%, and the CR2 of the two giants reached 9057%, highlighting its monopoly position in the international CPU market. In China, Intel and AMD each have a share of 91 percent in the x86 server CPU market0% and 57%。Although local companies such as Huawei Kunpeng and Loongson have emerged in China in the past decade, most of them operate independently and have multiple CPU architectures, which may lead to the dispersion of resources and increase competition within the industry, thus affecting the overall efficiency. If this trend continues, it may be difficult for China's CPU industry to produce products that can compete effectively with global mainstream vendors such as Intel and AMD.
Strong technical dependence and high resistance to self-development;
on the instruction set architectureThere are two development directions for China's CPU industry: First, there are two directions for development"Authorization + self-development"., the development of independent and controllable instruction set architecture, such as Loongson Zhongke born from the MIPS architecture, the self-developed LoongArch architecture and Shanghai Shenwei based on the Alpha architecture developed SW64 architecture. The advantage of this direction is that it can be independent and controllable, largely avoid the unfavorable situation of "stuck neck", and can meet the needs of China's application fieldThe disadvantages are that the foundation is weak, the R&D cost is high, and the product ecology is niche, making it difficult to enter the list of international mainstream CPUs.
The second is"Pure Authorization".Through architecture licensing agreements with foreign companies, existing architectures are used, such as Feiteng and Huawei HiSilicon both use ARM architecture, and Shanghai Zhaoxin and Haiguang Information both use x86 architecture. However, at present, the ARM and x86 architectures have stopped being licensed to Chinese enterprises, and even those with permanent licenses will face the problem of stopping the architecture and gradually falling behind the technology. The advantage of this direction is that it can use mature technology and ecology to broaden the downstream market and reduce the R&D cost and technical threshold of enterprisesThe disadvantage is that due to the constraints of structural intellectual property rights and the impact of the international situation, it is difficult to achieve autonomy and control, it is difficult to circumvent various sanctions, and at the same time, it is necessary to pay high structural royalties to reduce corporate profits. In chip manufacturingIn 2020, the index is only 16%, and it is mainly concentrated in low-end chips above the 28nm level, the penetration rate of high-end chips is low, and most of the chips below the 14nm and 16nm levels are foundry by overseas manufacturers such as TSMC and AMSL. In the upstream of the ** chain of chip production, China's major CPU manufacturers have used a large number of foreign technologies and equipment.
4. Analysis of computer CPU industry chain
The structure of China's computer CPU industry chain is relatively complex, involving many foreign companies and local Chinese enterprises. The upstream link includes three key parts: wafer foundry, packaging and testing, architecture design and licensing, and the representative companies are TSMC, JCET, and Intel;The midstream link includes the design and manufacture of CPUs, and the representative companies include Haiguang Information, Loongson Zhongke, and HiSilicon SemiconductorThe downstream links include servers, workstations, PC tablets, mobile terminals and embedded devices, etc., and the representative enterprises include Huawei, Lenovo, BYD, and Hikvision.
The upstream of China's CPU industry chain has strong bargaining power, high profit margins, and can carry out vertical monopoly on midstream enterprises, and the monopoly is strong, showing that foreign enterprises and Taiwan enterprises occupy a dominant position, and local enterprises in Chinese mainland follow the development trend. There is a shift trend in the development of the midstream of the industrial chain. China's chip design and manufacturing capabilities have improved significantly in the past few years, and more and more Chinese companies have begun to invest a lot of resources in the field of CPU design and manufacturing, and have achieved certain results. This shows that the midstream of the industrial chain is developing towards China and gradually reducing its dependence on foreign countries.
The downstream market of the industrial chain is ushering in a major opportunity to expand the civilian market. Chinese CPU companies need to expand their business scope in a timely manner, increase effective investment and technology development, meet diversified market demand, and achieve development and breakthroughs in the entire industry chain. The bottlenecks in the development of the industrial chain are mainly focused on the challenges of technology and intellectual property. The design and manufacture of CPUs involves highly complex technologies and patents, and there is still a certain gap in the accumulation and innovation of Chinese CPU companies in this regard. In addition, the supply of capital and talents is also one of the important factors restricting the development of the industrial chain.
Upstream of the industrial chain
Wafer foundry or wafer specialist refers to a business model in the semiconductor industry, specializing in semiconductor wafer manufacturing and production, accepting the commission of other IC design companies, rather than engaging in their own design, and most CPU manufacturers currently adopt this model.
(1) Analysis from the perspective of supplyChina is gradually realizing self-sufficiency in wafer foundry, enhancing the controllability of wafer foundry, and further ensuring the development of China's CPU industry chain in wafer foundry
(2) Analysis from the perspective of bargaining powerThe leading enterprises of wafer foundry have a high gross profit margin. Taking the representative industry leaders TSMC, GF, and SMIC as examples, their gross profit margins are respectively. 1% and 531%。
Midstream of the industrial chain
CPU design companies perform chip-level design work to translate the CPU architecture into specific circuit designs. This includes writing circuit logic and functionality in hardware description languages such as Verilog or VHDL, and validating, verifying, and optimizing them.
(1) Analysis from the perspective of profitabilityThere is a large difference in the profitability of Chinese CPU design enterprises, and the industry average is at a medium level. Taking the gross profit margin of listed companies of Chinese CPU design companies in 2021 announced in the Loongson Zhongke prospectus as an example, the maximum value is 63 of Jingjiawei24%, and the minimum value is 3610%, the difference between the maximum and minimum values is more than 27 percentage points, while the median is 4672%。
(2) Analysis from the perspective of technical levelCompared with the world's first-class CPUs, there is still a certain gap in key indicators such as process, number of cores, hyper-threading, main frequency, number of memory channels and maximum memory frequency, which is mainly reflected in the design capability. Compared with Intel and the completely autonomous Loongson, Intel has achieved a frequency of 3 in the 130nm process8G, while Loongson's 3A1000 has a frequency of only 1G under the premise of the same process and number of coresIf Intel products are reduced to 1G, the performance will be 5 times that of Loongson. In longitudinal comparison, taking Loongson as an example, its second-generation product 3A2000 has improved its performance by 2 through the improvement of design capabilities without increasing the main frequency5 times;
After the 3A3000 is increased to the 28nm process, the main frequency is increased to 15G, performance improvement by 16 times;On the basis of the original process, 3A4000 is designed to improve the performance by 2 times;3A5000 is upgraded to 14nm process, and the performance is improved by 16 times;The 3A6000 currently under development, according to Loongson, has reached Intel's performance level at 14nm. From the perspective of longitudinal development process, under the same process conditions, the improvement of product performance brought about by the improvement of design capability is very significant, and the gap in design capability is particularly important in the fabless mode.
Downstream of the industrial chain
The downstream applications of CPU include servers, workstations, PC tablets, mobile terminals and embedded devices, etc., and automobiles are a relatively promising market segment in embedded devices.
(1) Analysis from the perspective of application scenariosThe downstream industry has a huge market in China and overseas, with high overall profit margins but relatively low monopolies. At present, the main demand for domestic CPUs comes from servers, government and enterprises, information innovation and other markets, and rarely appears in the consumer market. "China Chip" has entered the stage of large-scale application in the field of government affairs.
(2) Analysis from the perspective of application requirementsThe surge in demand for new energy vehicles will simultaneously drive the market demand for high-temperature resistant and reliable CPUs, and promote the industrial transformation of CPU design companies in the direction of customization and diversification.
5. The scale of the computer CPU industry
China's computer CPU industry is currently in a period of rapid development, with a growth rate of 6The average growth rate of 91% is growing steadily and rapidly. In 2022, the scale of the computer CPU industry will drop to 314 due to the impact of various unfavorable factors such as the new crown epidemic**, the impact of the global CPU industry chain affected by the international situation, and the "core shortage tide".8.2 billion yuan, a decrease of 1519%。With the introduction of a series of incentive policies in China, the gradual stabilization of the international situation, and the drive of emerging fields such as 5G and the Internet of Things, the demand for high-performance, low-power, and high-integration CPUs will continue to increase, and the scale of China's CPU industry is expected to continue to develop steadily. It is estimated that by 2027, the size of China's computer CPU market will reach 51094.9 billion yuan.
The steady growth logic of the market size of China's CPU industry is mainly reflected in two aspects:
(1) China's economic environment and the continuous development of science and technology have driven demand growth and transformation. On the one hand, the improvement of Chinese consumers' spending power and changes in consumption habits have further stimulated the development of CPU and its downstream industries. On the other hand, developments in the field of emerging technologies are driving the demand for high-performance processors. With the continuous popularization of 5G technology in China, the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, the demand for processor performance is increasing. According to data released by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China's 5G terminal shipments exceeded 1700 million units, the spread of 5G terminals has further increased the demand for high-performance processors. At the same time, the application of artificial intelligence in various industries is also expanding, and the demand for high-performance CPUs is increasing.
China's supply-side structural reform has achieved remarkable results, and the increasing improvement of the entire industry chain has promoted the rapid development of the CPU industry. On the one hand, China** has issued a series of supportive policies to encourage local enterprises to carry out technology research and development and innovation in the CPU field. On the other hand, the development of China's CPU market has benefited from a complete industrial ecological chain system. From chip design, manufacturing to packaging and testing, the entire CPU ecological chain system has been continuously improved, improving supply efficiency and product quality. With the vigorous development of the industrial chain, China has become an important part of the global CPU chain, which has further improved the supply capacity of China's CPU.
6. Computer CPU competition pattern
The competitive landscape of China's computer CPU industry involves a number of local and international enterprises, and foreign companies are dominant, with a high degree of market concentration. Although local enterprises occupy a small market share, the industry as a whole has developed rapidly in recent years, and the market competition has become increasingly fierce. The local CPU industry in Chinese mainland is roughly divided into three echelons:
(1) The first echelon is the leading enterprises represented by Haiguang Information, Hisilicon Semiconductor, Shanghai Zhaoxin, Loongson Zhongke and other enterprises. Most of these companies are listed companies or parent companies, have strong financing capabilities, and have advantages in technology accumulation and market expansionAt the same time, it has laid out various types of CPU application markets and the research and development of supporting products earlier, has a relatively complete industrial chain and a wide range of business scope, and has a strong influence and brand effect in the industry. For example, when HiSilicon launched the Kunpeng 920 processor, it simultaneously launched the Kunpeng 920-based Taishan server and HUAWEI CLOUD services, forming a unique advantage of "device-edge-cloud computing power isomorphism" and further improving the processor performance through software and hardware synergy.
(2) The second echelon is represented by Feiteng Information, Beijing Junzheng, Torch Core Technology and other enterprises. These enterprises have flexible financing methods and policy support, and have good R&D and innovation capabilities, but they are also facing problems such as the increasing degree of product homogeneity and the need to continuously strengthen their core competitiveness.
(3) The third echelon is represented by enterprises such as Pingtouge, Guoxin Technology, and Shenwei Technology. These enterprises often have a unique development model and a more specific business type, such as Pingtou Ge at the beginning of its establishment, which clarified the development direction based on the RISC-V architecture and deeply cultivated the future development value of the enterpriseFeiteng Information mainly focuses on the military market, and its products focus on the field of special supercomputing servers, with exclusive barriers to fully controllable technology and ecology, and it is expected that it will continue to focus on the original field in the future.
From the perspective of industrial chain integration, there are high technical barriers in the upper and middle reaches of the CPU industry, midstream enterprises have a strong dependence on raw materials, equipment and technology of upstream enterprises, and midstream enterprises with strong capital strength realize the whole industrial chain through acquisitions and mergers of upstream enterprises to avoid the restriction of key technologies and industrial processes. Among the top 10 global chip acquisitions in 2022, three transactions involved chip design, involving an amount of 1,246$900 million;The three transactions involved wafer foundry, involving an amount of 600.5 billion US dollars. From the perspective of technology and business overlap, the overall technical level of the local CPU industry in Chinese mainland is relatively similar, and the degree of business overlap is high, and there may be a trend of mergers and acquisitions of inter-industry businesses.
The above content ** Intelligent computing core world.
Over the years, he has been focusing on scientific computing servers, and has been shortlisted for the political procurement platform, H100, A100, H800, A800, L40, L40S, RTX6000 ADArtx a6000Single dual-socket 256-core server, etc.