As we all know, American companies have always dominated the field of chip design. For example, Qualcomm accounts for 44% of the revenue of smartphone AP, SoCh, and baseband chip . Intel , Nvidia, AMD controls most of the PC and server chip markets, and Micron also ranks third in the world in the field of flash chip .
However, recently, the US Semiconductor Industry Association (abbreviated as SIA) has begun to worry: the US chip design status is in danger. Why does the US Semiconductor Association have this concern and what are the reasons?
The status of American chip design is dangerous?
It is understood that since the 1990s, US chip design companies have been the leader in global semiconductors, and their market share once remained above half. However, starting from 2020, such advantages have begun to show a significant downward trend.
According to statistics from US SIA, as of 2021, the total revenue of US chip design-related companies accounted for 46% of the world's share. In 2015, the US chip design market share accounted for more than 50% of the world. Although it only dropped by 4% by 2021, at the rate of decline, SIA is expected to fall further to 36% by 2030.
For this reason, SIA said that compared with the chip manufacturing process, although the lost share is not large, further decline may put the US chip design status in danger of wavering.
Of course, SIA's burden is not unreasonable. In the past two years, the US's actions have indeed been improper, which can cause its chip design market share to decline, and there will be many factors.
may be inseparable from these reasons
First of all, semiconductor are being deployed all over the world, and the trend of chip self-development is coming.
Because the United States has repeatedly modified the chip rules, many countries and regions have seen its "bad" side. Therefore, in order to get rid of American technology, countries and regions have begun to allocate budgets and issue policies to actively develop local semiconductors.
For example, 17 European member states established the "European Chip Alliance" and announced that they would invest 145 billion euros within three years to establish a "de-beautification" chip industry chain , and recently agreed to a chip production plan of 45 billion euros. South Korea plans to invest 340 trillion won in the chip industry chain in the next five years to support the development of the local semiconductor industry. India has introduced tax incentives and government subsidies and other policies to attract chip giants to set up factories in Printing and setting up factories.
. For the modification of chip rules in the United States, domestic science and technology companies have also started their own research path, such as Xiaomi , OPPO self-developed GPU, Huawei fully entered the semiconductor field, etc. Not only that, in terms of chip design, Chinese companies have been vigorously promoting the RISC-V instruction set, which contains 80% of the contributions from Chinese companies.
These are all caused by the US's unauthorized modification of chip rules, which aroused the determination of local science and technology companies to get rid of American technology, and more new chip design companies will compete with them.
Secondly, in order to suppress the development of other people's technology, the United States adopts a policy of decoupling training, and of course it is also cutting off its own market.
As we all know, the US has modified chip rules mainly to target Chinese companies such as Huawei, restrict the development of their advanced technologies, and consolidate its own chip dominance. In order to achieve its goal, it restricts the shipment of US companies such as Qualcomm and Intel, as well as OEM companies such as TSMC, which contain US technology.
However, it forgot that the functions of rules are mutual. Many American chip companies cannot ship at will, and naturally they will lose the support of customer orders. Because the domestic market is the world's largest chip consumer market, and the domestic market share of Meichi companies is quite large, and the restrictions on shipments by the United States are equivalent to breaking the vast chip demand market.
market is split, and revenue will naturally suffer losses. In 2022, US chip factories collectively "spent" and giants including Qualcomm, Intel, AMD and other giants all suffered the double blow of "shaking stock prices and lower performance than expected." As of November 2022, about 30 US chip companies have lowered their revenue expectations, and the total market value of semiconductor companies listed in the United States has "evaporated" by more than US$1.52 trillion, or approximately RMB 11 trillion.
The market value of halving means that the investment in R&D of Meixin companies will definitely decrease in the later stages, and the US chip design has always maintained its leadership position, which is related to its high R&D promotion of technological innovation. Nowadays, actively splitting related markets has led to a decline in market value and revenue. In the long run, the innovation of US chip design may be greatly affected.
Finally, the accelerated development of new technologies and new materials will also affect the semiconductor pattern.
has always been leading the technology in silicon chips, but it is because it has mastered its core technology that it dares to modify the chip rules many times. Therefore, in order to get rid of this technology, in addition to catching up with their technology, we can also overtake in new technologies and new materials.
For example, my country's science and technology enterprises have made good progress in quantum chip and optical chip .
The first domestic "multi-material, cross-size" photonic chip production line is under preparation and is expected to be completed and put into production in 2023. Recently, an NDPT-100 loss probe electrical measurement platform (destructive probe station) was added to the Hefei quantum chip production line, which can accurately identify the quality of quantum chips and greatly improve the yield rate of quantum chips.
In the post-Moore era, science and technology enterprises need to explore new architectures, new technologies and new materials. New technologies also give followers opportunities and there is a lot of room for innovation. Of course, American companies do not have the advantage in these new technologies, and the pattern of new semiconductors will naturally have major changes.
Conclusion
In fact, in summary, all these changes, except for the technical limit issues, are probably the reasons why the Americans suffer their own consequences. If it is not so "domineering" and does not arbitrarily restrict others' development and split the market, I believe that Meixin companies will go further.
If the long-term progress continues, it is estimated that the US chip design status is indeed dangerous, and it is possible to be shaken or even be replaced.
What do you think about this?
