TSMC founder Zhang Zhongmou
As an indispensable core product in modern technology life, chips have been not the core of our research and development for a long time. On the one hand, the reason is that in addition to the chip field, we are also in a short-term state in other science and technology fields, so we give priority to investing limited resources and energy in other scientific research directions that directly improve the living standards of the masses; on the other hand, under the influence of manufacturing and economic globalization, chips are easy to buy as a kind of technology product, and in terms of cost, it is much cheaper than independent research and development. This has also led to the long-term concept of "it is better to buy than to make" in the chip field.
chip
However, as the friction intensifies, technology products represented by chips have also become a weapon. Many excellent companies, including , Huawei , have also suffered a significant blow due to the supply of chips. Not only has revenue declined, but the previous rapid development momentum has also been interrupted and curbed.
But everything has both positive and negative sides. In the short term, Huawei's revenue fell from 891.3 billion to 636.8 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 28%. However, in the long term, Huawei's experience has also aroused the vigilance of many domestic manufacturers. All hope cannot be placed on foreign companies. Otherwise, once chip supply is cut off, Huawei's crisis today will also occur in any company.
Domestic chip
So more and more companies have begun to turn to domestic chip manufacturers, and this choice has also indirectly promoted the rise of the domestic chip field. When it comes to chips, many people's first impression may be high-end products such as central processor , graphics card chips, etc., but in fact, the chips include a few cents of MCU control chip to millions of dedicated core chips. There were two problems in the chip industry in the past, one was the technology field and the other was the market field.
technical field is naturally chip technology aspects such as chip design, chip design, chip packaging ; but compared with technology, market factors actually have a greater impact. Compared with new process chips such as mobile phones and computers, the real chip demanders, including the Internet of Things, industry, automobiles and other fields, are actually the real chip demanders. The chip demand for mature processes such as IGBT driver chips, MCU control chips, DSP chips, , etc., which are priced at a few cents to dozens of cents, the chip demand for mature processes such as 56nm and above is as high as hundreds of billions of pieces each year.
Chip Manufacturing
The competition for these chips is no longer a competition at the technical level, but more of a competition in cost control. Companies including Texas Instruments , Broadcom , STMicroelectronics and other companies have made their chip products cost-effective with long-term technical accumulation and cost control; on the contrary, although domestic chip manufacturers can also achieve the same functions in technology, they are difficult to surpass these Western technology companies that have been operating for hundreds of years, which ultimately led to the lack of breakthroughs and development of the domestic chip industry. On the contrary, foreign chips have plundered a large amount of profits from the domestic market. In 2021, chip imports hit a new high of US$440 billion, equivalent to RMB 2.97 trillion, which has reached twice the oil imports.
chip manufacturing
development of the chip industry is urgent, but there has been a lack of an opportunity to open up the market until the "supply cut off" occurs. More and more companies are beginning to use domestic chips to replace foreign chips due to concerns about the impact of supply cuts. Although domestic chips do not have an advantage in technology and price, their security characteristics are more favored. "Supply cut off" can be said to have opened up the market for the domestic chip industry. While opening up the market, it also allows domestic chips to accelerate their development and expansion, and ultimately optimize technology and reduce costs through the increase of production capacity and iteration. This has also allowed many domestic chip manufacturers to not only complete their catch-up with foreign companies, but also begin to erode their market share in the global field. According to statistics, the number of chip imports from January to June 2022 was 279.7 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 32.6 billion compared with 312.3 billion from January to June 2021; while the import chips decreased, the production of domestic chips also began to increase, and the annual chip production in 2021 reached 359.43 billion, an increase of 33.3% year-on-year.
Whether it is the reduction of imported chips by 32.6 billion yuan or the year-on-year increase in domestic chip production by 33.3% shows a reality - that is, the domestic chip industry is rising rapidly. The rise of the chip industry can not only ensure the sustainable development of related fields such as national security, aerospace, and smart cities, but also bring a large number of high-paying jobs and indirectly promote the realization of industrial upgrading.
Zhang Zhongmou delivered a speech at the 2021 Master Think Tank Forum
At the 2021 Master Think Tank Forum, TSMC founder Zhang Zhongmou publicly stated that the mainland's semiconductor industry has been behind TSMC for 5 years. This aspect expresses TSMC's leading position in the semiconductor field, and also recognizes the development speed and potential of the domestic semiconductor industry. Of course, although it has been five years behind TSMC, TSMC will not stop its continued progress, and it is difficult for the gap in these five years to catch up within five years.
However, the domestic semiconductor industry has shown huge development prospects. Coupled with the world's largest consumer electronics market, a large number of semiconductor professionals and complete infrastructure, the technology gap in the domestic semiconductor industry that has surpassed the past five years is not unavailable.
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