media reported in June this year that Jiang Shangyi (also known as the former "No. 2" of TSMC) will take over the position of CEO of Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor after resigning from the independent director of SMIC.
reported that Wuhan Hongxin took the initiative to find Jiang Shangyi for a while. Originally, Wuhan Hongxin planned to adopt the wafer foundry model, but because Jiang Shangyi considered not to compete with his old boss TSMC to avoid hurting TSMC's interests, he did not want to join. But Jiang Shangyi said that Hongxin Semiconductor wanted to transform and develop different business models, but after the transformation, there was no competition with TSMC, so he agreed to join. However, he did not disclose the specific business model, but said that it would definitely not be CIDM, but a brand new business operation model that has not yet appeared.
Taiwan industry has a very high evaluation of Jiang Shangyi, and some people respectfully call him "Bad Jiang". According to data, Jiang Shangyi has been in the semiconductor industry for more than 40 years; Jiang Shangyi joined TSMC in 1997 and retired in 2013. During this period, he participated in the research and development of CMOS, NMOS, Bipolar, DMOS, SOS, SOI, GaAs laser, LED, electron beam lithography, silicon-based solar cells and other projects; TSMC is responsible for the development of key nodes such as 0.25um, 0.18um, 0.15um, 0.13um, 90nm, 65nm, 40nm, 28nm, 20nm and even 16nm FinFET, making TSMC's position in the industry gradually become a leader from a technology follower. During his tenure at TSMC, Jiang Shangyi expanded his R&D team from 400 to 7,600, and cultivated a world-class R&D team. The R&D funding also expanded from billions to tens of billions. He can be regarded as one of the very important soul figures of TSMC. Zhang Zhongmou also praised Jiang Shangyi and valued him very much.
July 18, at the 2019 Episode Micro Semiconductor Summit, Jiang Shangyi, as CEO of Wuhan Hongxin, delivered a speech on the topic of "From integrated circuit to integrated system". This is also the first public appearance since he resigned from his independent director of SMIC and took over as CEO of Wuhan Hongxin. It is also the first time he talks about innovative business models and concepts, which has attracted much attention from the outside world.
Jiang Shangyi pointed out that changes in the overall environment and the slowdown in Moore's Law have an excellent opportunity for mainland China to achieve technological catching up with semiconductors. He believes that the so-called "integrated circuits" in the past were integrated on silicon wafers ; but when Moore's Law slows down, "system integration" will become the key to further reduce chip prices and increase efficiency in the post-Moore era.
Semiconductor integrated circuit has been developing for more than 60 years, and Moore's Law has approached its limit. Jiang Shangyi said that system design has not changed much in the past four or fifty years, and the development of circuit boards and packaging technology is much behind chips. Now the chip density in two-dimensional space exceeds that of circuit boards by more than 1 million times. The bottleneck in the future development of system technology lies in packaging and circuit boards, and the industry has developed advanced packaging technology to focus on solving it.
In addition, there are fewer and fewer customers and products that use advanced processes, and only a very small number of chips with extremely high demand may be used. According to statistics, advanced processes require US$500 million to US$1 billion to be invested, and more than 500 million chips are sold before they can recover their investment. Moreover, with the advent of the post-smartphone era, the requirements for chips are different, with a wide variety and rapid changes, but not necessarily large in quantity, and the current ecological environment is no longer applicable.
In order to deal with Moore's Law, the difficulty of chip continuous reduction has changed, and the bottlenecks of packaging and circuit boards are solved, through integrating the system to make the tightness of the connection between chips and the overall system performance similar to a single chip, thereby reducing costs and improving efficiency. "System integration" will become the key to further reduce chip prices and improve efficiency in the post-Moore era.
Jiang Shangyi said that the so-called "integrated system" concept has four main directions: First, the development of advanced packaging and circuit technology is to make the connection between chips similar to that of a single chip; Second, based on individual systems, select appropriate units for the special needs of individual units, and reintegrate them through advanced packaging and circuit board technology, which is called an integrated system; Third, from the system level, re-plan various units, including, under special circumstances, extremely large chips are folded into multiple units; Fourth, this will be the development trend of the post-Moor era.
Jiang Shangyi further elaborated on the details that why it was called an integrated circuit in the past was because it was on the same platform. The platform was to put different transistors and different resistor capacitors on the silicon wafer and put them into a circuit called an integrated circuit. However, now it is "long-term integration, long-term division, long-term integration". Consider disassembling one silicon wafer, integrating it with other silicon wafers, and combining it into a "system" on the new advanced packaging platform developed. This requires an advanced packaging technology that can gather different silicon wafers on one platform, so it becomes a system called an "integrated system".
can reduce the time of chip design by half and the cost by 40%. This is calculated by a large product company; not only can the price be reduced, but the efficiency can also be increased, but it can also integrate many chips that require optical and three or five generations. If there is such a platform, it is easy to place the silicon wafer and the three or five families on the same platform, which is another benefit.
Jiang Shangyi believes that this may be a trend in the so-called post-Moorish era, because although Moore's law has slowed down, innovation is still needed, and innovation will definitely continue. Although the chip cannot be made smaller and smaller, it depends on how to make a system smaller and smaller, which can reduce its cost and increase its efficiency.
Another great advantage is that if advanced packaging technology can be used to replace the circuit motherboard with silicon wafers, the spacing between the two silicon wafers can be reduced a lot, and at the same time, it can also redefine its interface and establish its own standards.
Jiang Shangyi also mentioned that the importance of building the entire ecological environment, from semiconductor equipment, raw materials to silicon wafers, to processes, packaging and testing and chip design are intertwined. It is necessary to establish the entire ecological environment. In each link, the process and design must be communicated very well, and the final system products must also be communicated very well, and to understand the overall needs of the system. And in this ecological environment, advanced packaging is used as the standard.
Finally, Jiang Shangyi analyzed that when establishing an ecosystem, the "infrastructure" of the industry should be built first. This infrastructure is to establish standards, silicon wafer processes, and IP libraries in the ecological environment. He emphasized that Moore's Law has slowed down now, which is "good news" for the country, because catching up will be easier. At the same time, the integrated system is assumed to be the right path and can be the first to layout the integrated system. In the post-Moore era, it will not be very hard to catch up, and there is even hope to take the lead.
(I compiled and published for tech crazier)
