Chip "unfinished" leads to questioning the artificial layout of the industry is tantamount to pulling out seedlings to encourage growth
Industry Watch
Hong Hengfei reporter Jiang Yun
Since the beginning of this year, the chip "unfinished tide" has caused widespread doubt.
At the 2nd China Development Planning Forum held on November 28, Wang Zhijun, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that blind investment and unfinished projects in the chip industry have occurred. The investment in integrated circuit manufacturing in the previous stage has also been exposed and caused huge losses. Plan and strengthen supervision.
Corresponding to blind investment, the development of the five major sectors of domestic integrated circuit design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, equipment and materials is still unbalanced.
So, how can China's integrated circuit industry achieve high-quality leapfrog development?
Oriented by industrial technology
Let business value be the ruler of innovation
Wu Hanming, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, pointed out that if my country wants to have a relatively controllable industrial chain, it must make major breakthroughs in the three major manufacturing links of technology, equipment materials, design IP core (intellectual property module) and EDA (electronic design automation).
The characteristics of the integrated circuit industry's long chain and wide range of fields have also brought great challenges to China's IC breakthrough barriers.
Wu Hanming believes that from the perspective of chip manufacturing, 80% of the equipment investment in the three major links of silicon single crystal, manufacturing process and packaging is in the manufacturing process. Due to the constraints of large investment and slow return, mature and independent manufacturing process It has become the biggest shortcoming in the development of my country's integrated circuit industry.
Wu Hanming believes that the reason why my country's chip technology has failed to achieve major breakthroughs lies in the weak basic research of my country's integrated circuits and the lack of industrial technology reserves.
Since 2013, the improvement of indicators such as chip performance and power consumption has slowed down significantly and even reached saturation.
The slowdown in industrial technology development worldwide has given opportunities for industry chasers.
"Only under the guidance of industrial technology can integrated circuits develop rapidly. Laboratory research is often good at single-point breakthroughs, but a complete industrial chain requires that there are no obvious shortcomings in multiple technologies. Industrial technology is not the application of scientific research institutions after transformation. Development should become the original driving force for guiding scientific research." In response to the weak development of industrial technology, Wu Hanming believes that an industrial technology-oriented technology culture should be established and commercial value should be an important criterion for measuring the value of technological innovation.
To this end, Wu Hanming suggested: strengthen applied basic research, encourage original innovation, highlight disruptive technological innovation, increase R&D investment on basic issues such as new materials, new structures, and new principles and devices; and carry out industrial ecological construction at the national level.
Plan and layout systematically and scientifically, follow the development law of "one generation of equipment, one generation of technology, and one generation of products", and increase support for materials, equipment, and key processes; industrial development follows the development of internal and external cycles and adheres to global development.
Form a long-term development mechanism
Respect the natural industrial layout
Wei Shaojun, vice chairman of the China Semiconductor Industry Association and Professor Wei Shaojun from the Institute of Microelectronics of Tsinghua University, believes that China's integrated circuit market has "strong demand and insufficient supply", which also means huge room for development.
Fortunately, China's competitiveness in the integrated circuit industry has also been greatly improved.
According to statistics from the China Semiconductor Association, my country's integrated circuit industry grew rapidly from 2004 to 2019, and its output value increased nearly 14 times.
Industrial technology finally appears on the product.
Wei Shaojun said that China has the "first-hand business opportunity" brought about by the impact of the epidemic. This is also an opportunity for China's integrated circuit development. We must seize this opportunity to shorten the gap with the world's leading companies.
We must focus on products and promote the healthy development of all links in the industrial chain.
While continuing to develop the "design + foundry" model, we should also vigorously develop IDM (integrated circuit system integration service provider integrating design, manufacturing and sales).
He believes that by relying on the IDM model, companies have realized the integration of multiple links such as chip design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, which can compress profits in multiple links and reduce chip costs.
In addition to changing the current integrated circuit industry pattern through the development of IDM, Wei Shaojun believes that my country's manufacturing industry layout also needs to be optimized.
"What we lack is high-end production capacity, but in terms of industrial layout, the enthusiasm for investing and building factories in various places has been soaring in recent years, causing batches of manufacturing projects to face unfinished shutdowns. This kind of blind impulse that goes against the development law of the semiconductor industry is worthy of vigilance." Wei Shaojun said , We must unswervingly follow the road of two-wheeled balance driving of technology and capital, form a long-term and stable investment mechanism for integrated circuit innovation resources, and at the same time respect the naturally formed industrial layout, rather than deliberately artificial layout.