2022 will be an extremely unstable year for Chinese semiconductors. Before the old problems have been solved, new challenges have arrived. The core shortage situation has just been alleviated to some extent, and chip manufacturers have encountered a cold situation in the capital market. Coupled with repeated epidemics and heavy sanctions from the United States, the future of Chinese semiconductor companies seems unclear.
"No one knows how to respond. We can only be friends with time." An industry analyst gave a slightly pessimistic answer when discussing with Leifeng.com how Chinese semiconductor companies should respond to the heavy sanctions imposed by the United States. Perhaps this answer also applies to the development attitude that Chinese semiconductor companies should hold for a long time to come.
But perhaps, we can also be more optimistic on this basis. In the last week of 2022, at the 2022 China (Shenzhen) Integrated Circuit Summit Forum, Academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, Vice Chairman of the China Semiconductor Industry Association, and Director of the Integrated Circuit Design Branch of the China Semiconductor Industry Association Wei Shaojun, chairman of the board of directors and chief technical engineer of major national science and technology projects in China, Wei Shaojun, vice president of CCID Consulting of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's CCID Research Institute, and Li Ke, a national registered consultant, all made predictions about the future of China's semiconductors. Among them, Wei Shaojun said that we should recognize the situation clearly and strengthen our confidence.
The United States will further increase its containment efforts, and China will re-examine its semiconductor development ideas
At this forum, Wei Shaojun made a prediction for the development of China's semiconductors in the next year. He believes that there are five major trends in the development of China's semiconductors in the next year:
First, the United States' containment of China's semiconductor industry is moving toward unilateral and semi-decoupling, which will further increase its containment of China.
Judging from the external speeches of the US National Security Council and its corresponding think tank members, the United States is very determined to curb China's semiconductor development. Schmidt, an American AI strategist and founder and CEO of Google, said that the United States needs to ensure that it is at least two generations ahead of China's semiconductors, and that it needs to jointly compete with Japan, South Korea and Europe. Matheny, the person in charge of China policy, also said that maintaining the leadership in semiconductors is the real basis for the leadership in artificial intelligence. What followed was a series of policies introduced by the United States on October 7, and the blueprints for these policies happened to come from the Security and Information Center CSET created by Masini.
Second, the new central government will re-examine China’s semiconductor development ideas, update organizational forms, and customize new development strategies and measures.
By 2023, the integrated circuit industry development and promotion outline released by the State Council in 2014 will have been ten years old. In the past ten years, while many achievements have been achieved, many problems have also been exposed, which will inevitably require some new adjustments. For example, in the future, we should not continue to focus on making up for our shortcomings, but should instead strengthen our strong points.
"Re-examine the development ideas of semiconductors and formulate new development strategies and measures, which will be extended to 2035 or even beyond." Wei Shaojun said.
Third, the focus of technological development will shift from advanced processes to chip research and development that is weakly sensitive to processes and EDA tools, focusing on PPA that improves mature processes.
This is because semiconductor development has entered a new stage. New devices, new materials, and new processes are the focus of future development. At the same time, the importance of innovation in chip architecture and micro-nano integration is also increasing, and our country has made technological breakthroughs in many fields. For example, the Xtacking technology of Yangtze Memory has made innovations in 3D hybrid bonding. From the beginning, it was not favored by the industry, but now it has been recognized by major international manufacturers. In addition, domestically developed near-memory computing technology can achieve energy efficiency two orders of magnitude higher than that of internationally used mainstream processes using only mature processes.
Fourth, a number of innovative products and solutions are about to be launched to break the containment and embargo. The application of 5G continues to deepen into mMTC and uRLLC, playing a role in smart agriculture and smart cities.
Fifth, integrated circuit talent training will gather more practical talents. The talent training program for outstanding engineers in integrated circuit applications will be fully rolled out, but the integration of production and education into will become the biggest challenge in cultivating integrated circuit talents in colleges and universities.
The growth rate of the global semiconductor market has declined, and China's semiconductor import and export has experienced negative growth for the first time.
Li Ke made predictions and prospects for semiconductor trends in 2023 through quantitative analysis of the market and qualitative analysis of the industry.
He said that in the past 20 years, 2022 will be the year when the global semiconductor growth rate declines the fastest, and it is predicted that there will be negative growth next year. The WSTS organization even gave a forecast of -4.1% growth rate. "It was originally expected to exceed the US$600 billion mark next year, but now it seems that we will have to wait a few more years." Li Ke said.
This is reflected in the entire market. Whether it is the growth rate of market share of advanced technology or the growth rate of of the top 20 semiconductor manufacturers in the world, they are not optimistic enough.
It took 10 years for the market share of processes below 10nm to reach 5.9%, while the market share of 10nm to 18nm processes reached 15% in the same time period, and the market share growth rate of process processes was greatly reduced. In addition, whether it is Intel , Hynix and Samsung , almost all companies that develop advanced processes will have negative growth in 2022, while European companies such as Infineon and NXP will still maintain performance growth.
The global semiconductor industry will have mixed results in 2022, especially the Chinese semiconductor industry. Observing China's semiconductor import and export data, China's semiconductor industry's import and export experienced negative growth in the first 11 months. This is the first time in China's history that there has been negative growth.
Li Ke said that in the past thirty years, even during the Asian financial crisis in 1998 and the subprime mortgage crisis around 2008, China's integrated circuit industry import and export has maintained growth. "Is China getting stronger? Or is the entire market environment getting worse? Our analysis is unclear. This is worthy of our thinking and discussion." Li Ke said.
In addition, Li Ke also gave five qualitative development trends:
First, the government will intervene more and more in the development of integrated circuits in the future;
Second, all countries around the world will vigorously subsidize the development of the semiconductor industry;
Third, Moore's Law is approaching the physical limit, and we will seek breakthroughs in more directions;
Fourth, the global semiconductor business model may enter a new round of industrial integration;
Fifth, the semiconductor industry is still one of the tracks with the most development potential in the national economy.
"The more this situation occurs, the more we must take control of ourselves." Li Ke finally said.
