Text/Liu Yuying
Recently, the media reported that the United States joined hands with the Netherlands and Japan to reach a cooperation agreement to ban the sale of some DUV equipment to China, in an attempt to block the Chinese chip manufacturing industry.
With the rounds of unprovoked sanctions by the United States, "lack of core and soul" has attracted great attention time and time again.
But in fact, the "soul" is not only the operating system, but also basic software such as databases, operating systems, tool software, and development software. In these key links of the IT supply chain that have not received enough attention, the long march of Chinese companies has just begun.
The "weakness" of domestic software
The trade frictions and global industrial chain restructuring in recent years have further highlighted the strategic position of basic software in the real economy and the digital economy, and are also related to industrial and economic security.
On August 13, 2022, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued final regulations on the export control of EDA software and other technologies necessary for the design of GAAFET (full gate field effect transistor) structural integrated circuits.
As a chip design software, EDA can perform functional design, physical design, verification, etc. of VLSI chips.
EDA itself is extremely complex, which is of great significance for realizing chip autonomy.
After realizing the autonomy of EDA tools, the prerequisites for the autonomy of semiconductors can be basically achieved.
At present, the global EDA software is mainly monopolized by three American companies, including Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor.
The market share of their products in China is as high as 85%.
The market size of EDA software is small, but its effect on the semiconductor market is extremely obvious. Cutting off the supply of EDA software is not conducive to the development of China's chip industry.
Another "discontinuation of confession" incident occurred in 2020.
The U.S. Department of Commerce has added dozens of Chinese companies and 13 universities to its "entity list" for sanctions.
Soon after, teachers and students of Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin Engineering University, Beihang University and other Chinese universities discovered that when using the "engineering artifact" Matlab, the license was invalid.
Matlab is a commercial mathematical software launched by MathWorks in the United States in 1984. As long as it is related to mathematics, all fields need to use this software.
Risks sometimes come from the business itself.
In December 2020, Red Hat announced that it will stop maintaining CentOS8 at the end of 2021, and stop maintaining CentOS7 on June 30, 2024. Official upgrades and patches will not be available in the future.
As a server operating system, CentOS has been widely used in telecommunications, finance, Internet, government affairs and other industries.
The discontinuation of CentOS means that a large number of users who use CentOS urgently need to find alternative solutions, but this also makes domestic operating system manufacturers stand up to undertake the needs of CentOS ecological continuation and technical support.
In addition, open source has become the main way for the development of the software industry, and Chinese software actively participates in internationally renowned open source communities.
Although "source code" has no borders, software, as a "product", is controlled by the US Export Control Regulations.
Previously, Github, an open source community under Microsoft, had banned developers from some countries, including Iran.
This has also caused Chinese developers to worry about whether their own accounts will be banned as the relationship between major countries changes.
China's basic software is almost monopolized by foreign companies.
In the field of operating systems, there are Microsoft Windows, Google's Android, and Apple's iOS; in the database field, there are Oracle, Microsoft's SQL Server, and IBM's DB2.
According to the research data of the China Software Association, in 2020, in the field of global operating systems and basic software (including desktops, databases, cloud operating systems, tool software, etc.), the US business revenue is about 0.81 trillion US dollars, accounting for one-fifth of the global proportion. Four.
The share of basic software in my country is small, the domestic market share of domestic software is only 5%, and the domestic market share of domestic operating system is only 4%.
The "Sino-US Strategic Competition in the Technology Field: Analysis and Prospect" released by Peking University's Institute for International Strategic Studies at the end of January believes that the United States has obvious advantages in various operating systems and has mastered core technologies such as the kernel.
In contrast, although China's domestic independent operating system has a certain market share, it lacks core competitiveness as a whole.
U.S. companies also maintain leadership positions in most industrial software categories.
Chinese companies occupy a certain domestic market share in data-sensitive software such as economic management, but it is always difficult to break through in the global high-end market.
However, there is still a big gap between China and the United States in terms of R&D design and general tool software (such as EDA software), which are more critical to the development of information technology.
Some analysts in the industry pointed out that from the underlying chip to the operating system, root technology, development tools and various application software services, the digital ecosystem in the United States has already flourished. A relatively complete structural context has been basically constructed, but the overall structure is still very weak.
From the perspective of the entire software ecology, there is still a big gap between China's software industry and the United States in all aspects.
Why Basic Software Matters: Using Developing Software as an Example
Software development tools are one type of basic software.
Foreign industry analysis shows that in 2022, the global software development tools market size will be about 5.1 billion US dollars, and it is expected to grow to about 11.5 billion US dollars by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 14.5%.
In terms of global market share, North America has a market share of more than 50%, followed by Europe, which has a market share of more than 20%.
The role of software development tools is similar to that of lithography machines for chip manufacturing.
The lithography machine is used for the lithography process of chip production, and the lithography process is the most critical step in the chip production process, so the lithography machine, as the carrier of lithography technology, is one of the indispensable key production tools for chip manufacturing .
An advanced lithography machine may even affect the development process of a country's chip industry.
In the process of software development, based on ideas and needs, developers use end-to-end software development tools to develop ideas step by step into application software that can be perceived, utilized, and experienced by enterprises and consumers.
The combination of software, hardware, chips, etc., is an electronic product that is widely used in all walks of life.
This also requires many key development tools similar to lithography machines, which are cutting-edge technology carriers for software development and an indispensable basis for software product production.
The categories of software development tools mainly include: project management, code hosting, code inspection, compilation and construction, deployment, testing, and release.
If there is a lack of software development tools, the survival foundation of the entire software industry will be directly challenged.
Taking the test software as an example, in December 2019, a new generation of manned spacecraft of a national airline was launched into space.
Just after the work of the launch vehicle was over, the spacecraft malfunctioned, which eventually made it impossible to dock with the International Space Station and had to return to the ground early.
After investigation, due to serious flaws in the program for testing the software system of the manned spacecraft, the entire flight process was only divided into several small units for testing in the testing phase, and the spacecraft was not fully tested from launch to docking with the International Space Station to landing. The process integration test led to the accident.
At present, the core manufacturers of software development tools in the world mainly include Microsoft, Jetbrains, Perforce, Atlassian, Adobe, etc., with a total market share of about 45%. manufacturer.
A large number of Chinese software companies directly purchase American commercial tools, and a large number of domestic software tool chains rely on open source technology packaging.
Since 2019, more than 1,000 Chinese companies and institutions have been included in the US "Entity List".
Sanctions and controls on related commodities and technologies may directly lead to the production stagnation of relevant parties, threatening the survival and safety of enterprises and institutions.
From a development perspective, only core tools that are independently controllable by R&D tools (such as software development tools) can guarantee the security of an enterprise's core business.
Chinese companies enter the breakout window period
According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, from 2000 to 2020, the overall size of China's software market has grown by 135 times, compared with 3.2 times in the United States; in 2020, the scale of China's software industry accounts for 24% of the global software industry, accounting for the proportion of GDP About 7.9%.
China's software industry is growing rapidly.
During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, China's basic software such as operating systems, databases, middleware, and office software achieved breakthroughs and achieved a series of landmark achievements.
For example, in terms of EDA software, there are now more than 50 EDA companies in China, including Huada Jiutian, Guowei Group, Core Vision, etc., which have increased the market share of EDA from 6% to 11% in recent years.
In terms of operating systems, systems such as Kirin Galaxy, Tongxin, Euler, and Hongmeng have emerged in China, and they have built their own open source communities to attract global developers to join, and at the same time vigorously accelerate ecological construction.
In order to solve the "stuck neck" risk of software development tools, Huawei began to conduct de-Americanization self-research in 2019, covering hardware (X86->ARM), operating system (Linux/Windows->Euler), database (Oracle-> RDS), middleware, and application software transformation are five major categories of full-stack self-developed replacements, involving the replacement of hundreds of components and the testing and verification of tens of millions of lines of code.
With the continuous expansion of software scale, the source code scale of generated software is also rising sharply. The scale of a single software system has reached hundreds of millions of lines and thousands of developers.
On February 20, CodeArts Repo, a Huawei cloud code hosting service, was officially launched. This is a full-stack self-developed, Git-based cloud code hosting service. It currently manages and protects Huawei's 110 billion lines of code and supports 150,000 development operations. With an average daily download volume of 100 million times, 1PB transmission traffic, and 300 million API calls, a system supports the code management and collaborative development of Huawei's embedded, cloud, terminal, and car products.
Now, China's domestic software development is ushering in a new round of critical window period.
First, as the global software industry has entered the era of "software defines everything", new software platforms and new architectures will be introduced. Software definition is no longer limited to hardware resources such as computing, storage, and networks, but has also begun to move toward cloud computing, industrial Internet, etc.; Second, in the era of the Internet of Everything, new application scenarios continue to emerge, bringing new demands.
For example, Euler is positioned as the base of the digital economy under the Internet of Everything, providing a unified "language" operating system for different devices.
After nearly two years of development, the Euler community has attracted more than 6,000 developers and more than 100 companies to join. Domestic operating system leaders have released commercial releases based on Euler, which are widely used in government, operators, finance, transportation and other fields. Deploy at scale.
At present, China is implementing the industrial foundation reengineering project, and the basic software will be supported.
"The 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Software and Information Technology Service Industry" puts the basic software in an important position.
Its measures include improving operating system products and supporting tool sets for desktops, servers, mobile terminals, and vehicles, and promoting the integration, adaptation, and optimization of operating systems and databases, middleware, office suites, security software, and various applications; promoting software integration Development and application promotion of environment-related products and key testing tools.
In the short term, under US sanctions and technology decoupling, Chinese software companies will be hit hard, but at the same time, the opportunities of the times will also bring new possibilities to China's software industry.
This requires the industry to make breakthroughs in terms of technology, applications, ecology, and talents.
As emphasized by the central government: Adhere to the integrated design of original innovation, integrated innovation, and open innovation to achieve effective integration; adhere to the integrated deployment of innovation chains, industrial chains, and talent chains to promote deep integration.
In the long run, China's basic software will usher in greater development.