Chip capacity shortages are accelerating the layout in many places, which cities have strong IC competitiveness
Beginning in the second half of last year, the shortage of chip production capacity continued to ferment.
As the world's largest integrated circuit market, my country's key regions and corporate leaders are also strengthening their layout.
On April 7, the "Wuxi Release" announced that Nanjing Customs agreed to carry out a pilot reform of the integrated integrated circuit industry chain bonded model in Wuxi.
Business pilots include measures such as establishing an industrial chain assessment mechanism and promoting self-regulatory management of the industrial chain. Four upstream and downstream affiliates including SK Hynix Semiconductor in Wuxi High-tech Zone Comprehensive Bonded Zone have become pilot enterprises to carry out high-end manufacturing full-industry chain bonded supervision model business reforms.
As a major town in the integrated circuit industry, Shanghai released the second batch of 14 characteristic industrial parks on the 7th, focusing on the three leading industries, strengthening the chain in key areas, and emerging integration areas in three categories.
Among them, characteristic parks such as Pujiang Chuangxin City (three leading industries) and electronic chemicals zone (key areas to reinforce the chain) are all integrated circuits.
"Pujiang Chuangxin City focuses on the construction of integrated circuit research and development and headquarters bases, relying on the agglomeration effect of head enterprises to build a head enterprise agglomeration base in the fields of integrated circuit design, equipment, packaging and testing. The electronic chemicals zone focuses on the development of photoresist And its supporting materials, electronic special gas and wet electronic chemicals, focusing on accelerating the improvement of integrated circuit supply chain guarantee capabilities." Zeng Wenhui, director of the Industrial Park and Structural Adjustment Division of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, told reporters.
Li Ke, deputy secretary-general of the China Semiconductor Industry Association, told reporters that in key domestic areas, cities should, under the overall coordination of the country, give full play to their own unique advantages, and form various links in the industrial chain including design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, equipment, materials, and applications. The pattern of coordinated development avoids the risk of low investment efficiency and low-end overcapacity caused by a swarm of companies rushing to get projects.
Top 15 IC cities
Regarding the shortage of production capacity, localities have also accelerated the deployment of integrated circuits.
At present, the domestic integrated circuit industry is basically distributed in provincial capital cities or coastal cities with separate plans, showing the distribution characteristics of "one axis and one belt".
After years of deployment, my country currently has four main industrial clusters, namely the Yangtze River Delta with Shanghai as the center, the Bohai Rim with Beijing as the center, the Pan-Pearl River Delta with Shenzhen as the center, and the central and western regions represented by Wuhan and Chengdu. area.
The Core Idea Research Institute recently released a ranking of integrated circuit competitiveness of mainland Chinese cities in 2021, which is evaluated from six indicators including industrial scale, industrial chain support, market demand, policy support, innovation capability, and industrial vitality.
According to the calculation results, Shanghai and Beijing ranked first and second, Wuxi surpassed Shenzhen and ranked third, and Wuhan and Hefei surpassed Chengdu and Xi'an to rank fifth and sixth.
Among the top 15 cities, the Yangtze River Delta region occupies six seats, namely Shanghai, Wuxi, Hefei, Nanjing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou.
This ranking is also roughly in line with my country's existing integrated circuit industry structure and the layout of the integrated circuit industry in various places.
Shanghai, which ranks first on the list, has integrated circuits covering design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, equipment materials and other fields.
In the list of winners of the advanced manufacturing cluster competition finals announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology a few days ago, the Shanghai IC cluster was selected as the first batch of finalists.
At the 2021 Shanghai Global Investment Promotion Conference held on April 7, 216 major industrial projects with a total investment of 489.8 billion yuan were signed, and a total of 118 projects in the manufacturing sector were signed.
Among the three leading industries, there are 16 contracted projects in the field of integrated circuits. For example, Tongcheng Electronics plans to build a new semiconductor photoresist and supporting reagent project in the chemical zone, which can form an annual output of 11,000 tons of semiconductor photoresist and 20,000 tons of related supporting solvents. , To further promote the localization of photoresist production.
Data show that in 2020, the scale of Shanghai's integrated circuit industry will account for about 22% of the country, and the output value will exceed 200 billion yuan, an increase of more than 20%.
Currently, more than 700 key integrated circuit companies have settled in Shanghai, forming a cluster effect.
In Zhangjiang National Independent Innovation Demonstration Zone alone, the production and sales scale of integrated circuits in 2020 will reach 180 billion yuan, accounting for 1/5 of the country.
Second place, Beijing, also launched the construction of the Northern Integrated Circuit Technology Innovation Center project on March 24.
Beijing Yizhuang stated that this is another key project in the integrated circuit industry under the background of the implementation of the "4+2+1" industrial system in the construction of the "two districts" of the Beijing Economic Development Zone. The integrated circuit industry ecosystem centered on Beijing will help improve the quality and efficiency of integrated circuit production lines.
In early February, the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone concentrated on signing 129 "two-zone" construction projects, with a total investment of nearly 400 billion yuan, of which the investment in integrated circuit projects exceeded 200 billion yuan.
It is also worth noting that among the top 15 cities, Jiangsu has a total of 3 cities on the list, namely Wuxi, Nanjing and Suzhou.
On March 21, Jiangsu held a special class work promotion meeting for the integrated circuit industry chain, proposed to focus on supporting areas with basic conditions and actively support the growth of leading enterprises and industry leaders.
And Wuxi, which has just ushered in favorable policies for integrated circuits, in 2020, the city's integrated circuit industry operating income will reach 142 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 27.5%, accounting for more than half of Jiangsu Province, and its industrial scale ranks first in Jiangsu cities and top three cities in the country. .
Yang Jungang, a senior analyst at CCID Consulting’s Integrated Circuit Industry Research Center, analyzed to reporters that Wuxi’s ranking jumped one place this year. The main reason is that Wuxi has always been an established city in the development of integrated circuit industry, and the integrated circuit industry layout is also very complete, including SK Hynix, Large-scale manufacturing plants such as China Resources Micro, Huahong Semiconductor, packaging and testing also have leading companies such as Changjiang Electronics Technology, and design companies include Zhuo Shengwei, Xin Jie Neng and other recent hot areas of the industry.
In addition, this policy announced on the 7th will also promote the development of the entire industrial chain to a certain extent.
In Yang Jungang’s view, in the central and western regions, Wuhan and Hefei are weaker than Chengdu and Xi’an in terms of the overall strength of the integrated circuit industry, but from the perspective of their development in recent years, they are very strong, including local cultivating enterprises and attracting investment from domestic and foreign companies. The strength of enterprises is relatively large.
"Especially the current memory project, Yangtze River Storage is located in Wuhan and Changxin Storage is located in Hefei. The two companies have a relatively rapid development layout, and the future development potential is stronger."
Capacity shortage will continue
Qualcomm CEO Anmeng said on the fiscal quarter conference call in early February that the global semiconductor industry is out of stock, not only the lack of advanced process capacity, but also the traditional node process capacity is also facing challenges, chip shortages may have to wait until the end of this year.
At SEMICON China in March this year, Wu Hanming, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and dean of the School of Micronanoelectronics, Zhejiang University, stated that if we do not accelerate development, the gap in China’s chip production capacity (with the advanced countries) will be widened to at least 8 SMIC’s capacity, so we must speed up.
Ziguang Group Co-President Chen Nanxiang also stated at SEMICON China that the chip industry is a cyclical industry. Previously, the supply and demand situation showed a three-stage change of "inventory, digestion, and inventory". However, since 2020, the global chip industry no longer meets this requirement. One law.
Although the current capacity expansion has been in progress, the capacity for expansion is actually still unable to keep up with the growth of demand. With the total supply unchanged, the semiconductor industry will face a new normal of dynamic imbalance between supply and demand.
At the same time, the global semiconductor industry is undergoing an upswing, and the market's demand for chips will further expand.
The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics Organization predicts that the global semiconductor market will reach US$469.4 billion in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 8.4%.
It is foreseeable that the shortage of global chip production capacity will continue to exist in the next period of time.
Li Ke said that China is the world's largest integrated circuit market, and a large number of required chips rely on imports. The shortage of chips will have a negative impact on domestic electronics companies.
In Li Ke's view, the current shortage of chip production capacity is mainly due to the demand side, the supply side, and the supply chain.
The application of the new generation of information technology products is accelerating, driving the rapid growth of chip demand. In addition, due to the continuous increase of investment required for the construction of chip production lines, the global semiconductor production capacity has grown slowly in recent years. The superimposed epidemic and other factors have caused short-term chip supply interruptions.
Finally, affected by international trade, upstream and downstream companies in the industry chain are increasing inventories to prevent the risk of supply interruption, which invisibly further aggravates the "rush to buy" chips.
According to data from the SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association), global semiconductor sales in January 2021 increased by 13.2% year-on-year. Among them, China's sales accounted for the second place (12.4%), an increase of 3.4% year-on-year.
On March 29, the Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Customs, and the State Administration of Taxation announced the "Notice on Supporting the Development of the Integrated Circuit Industry and Software Industry" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"), clarifying that the integrated circuit industry is exempt from import taxes. Case.
For example, the "Notice" proposes that for logic circuits and memory manufacturers with integrated circuit line widths less than 65 nanometers (inclusive, the same below), as well as special process integrated circuit manufacturers with line widths less than 0.25 micrometers, they cannot be imported or produced in China. Self-use production raw materials, consumables, special building materials for clean rooms, supporting systems, and spare parts for integrated circuit production equipment (including imported equipment and domestic equipment) that meet the needs are exempt from import tariffs.
For key raw materials and spare parts manufacturers in the integrated circuit industry, import tariffs are exempted for self-use production raw materials and consumables that cannot be produced in the country or whose performance cannot meet demand.
In fact, this is not the first time that the integrated circuit and software industries have ushered in tax benefits.
In August last year, the State Council announced the "Notice on Several Policies to Promote the High-Quality Development of the Integrated Circuit Industry and Software Industry in the New Era". This new policy is regarded by the industry as the most powerful document with the widest coverage, including fiscal, taxation, investment and financing. , Research and development, import and export, talents, intellectual property rights, market applications, and international cooperation.
Li Ke told reporters that next, domestic companies need to make efforts in independent innovation and expanding supply.
In terms of innovation, seize the rare window period of the chip field in the seller's market, increase research and development efforts and quickly enter the market.
In terms of supply expansion, we will further improve management capabilities and production efficiency, increase existing capacity supply capacity, and increase financing to expand new capacity.