(report producer/author: China Merchants Securities, Yan Fan, Lu Zhiqi)
. Semiconductor IP is a pre-designed, verified, reusable functional module. The upstream of the industrial chain
semiconductor IP refers to a pre-designed, repeatedly verified, and reusable functional module in integrated circuit design . Semiconductor IP serves chip design. Since some general functional modules are repeatedly used in chips, semiconductor IP is such pre-designed functional modules, so that EDA software and semiconductor IP are used in chip design to shorten the chip design cycle. Reduce development costs. IP is a core industrial element and competitiveness of the integrated circuit design industry due to its high performance, excellent power consumption, moderate cost, high technology intensity, concentrated intellectual property rights, and expensive commercial value.
Semiconductor IP core can be applied to multiple functional components in the chip. The IP core can be applied to multiple components in the chip. Current IP suppliers can provide IP for most components in the chip, such as processors, peripheral interfaces, analog components, RAM/ROM, security modules, etc. Different components correspond to different IP requirements. By combining the IPs of different components to form a complete chip design layout.
chip design is composed of the independent design part and the purchased IP, and the proportion of purchased IP is increasing. The chip consists of a circuit part independently designed by the chip design company and a number of purchased IP cores. The purchased IP cores that have been repeatedly verified and reusable can reduce design workload, shorten design cycles, and improve the success rate of chip design. In the current chip design, the purchased IP portion of verified IP, embedded storage IP and wired interface IP has exceeded 50%. The purchase proportion of processor IPs such as CPU is higher, and the proportion of purchase of outsourced IPs is increasing.
Semiconductor IP industry is at the top of the industrial chain and provides basic modules for chip design. The semiconductor industry chain can be roughly divided into three links: chip design, manufacturing and packaging and testing, and the chip design link is based on chip specification requirements, through system design, logic design, circuit design and physical design, and finally form a design layout. The upstream EDA tool suppliers and semiconductor IP suppliers in this link provide automation software tools required for chip design and core functional modules required for building SoCs; design service suppliers provide some or all R&D services and subsequent R&D links in each R&D link; wafer manufacturing, packaging and testing out-of-subsidiary management. Currently, most chip manufacturers use the outsourcing IP + the independent design of some IP, and combine the outsourcing EDA tools to conduct independent chip design. Fabless and IDM companies are the main downstream customers of IP nuclear manufacturers.
2. There are many types of semiconductor IP products, and processor IP and interface IP occupy a large market size
Semiconductor IP can be classified according to delivery method, product type and function. According to the delivery method, the IP core can be divided into hard core, solid core and soft core:
hard core: hard core is a relatively mature IP. Hard core mainly exists in the form of a later-stage layout, and hard core provides the final design. The stage product is mask . The mask refers to a design layout that has been fully laid out and routed, verified by the front-end and back-end. It has good predictability. At the same time, it can optimize power consumption and size for specific processes or downstream customers. It is flexible. Poor portability and poor portability. But it is also because the hard core does not require RTL files to provide, so it is easier to implement intellectual property protection .
solid core: For some kernels that have strict timing requirements, specific signals can be pre-wired or specific wiring resources can be allocated to meet timing requirements. This type of core can be classified as solid core. Solid core is a tradeoff between soft core and hard core. It adopts the IP submission form of gate-level netlists, which still has a certain correlation with the chip implementation process, so flexibility and reliability are both tradeoffs between soft core and hard core. The kernel establishment, hold time and handshake signal may be fixed, so other circuit designs must consider correctly interface with the kernel.If the kernel has a fixed layout or partially fixed layout, this will also affect the layout of other circuits.
Soft core: Soft core is the most primitive IP, mainly in hardware description languages such as HDL. The design cycle of soft core IP is relatively short and the design investment is relatively small. Since it does not involve physical implementation, the soft core has certain flexibility. and adaptability, the main disadvantage is that to a certain extent, the subsequent processes cannot adapt to the overall design, thus requiring a certain degree of soft core correction, and comprehensive optimization in performance cannot be obtained. In addition, because the soft core needs to submit the RTL source code file , so it is more likely to involve intellectual property issues.
is classified according to product type. Semiconductor IP is commonly classified as processor IP, interface IP, physical IP and digital IP. It can be divided into processor, interface, analog, basic, secure IP, and SoC architecture and IP acceleration.
interface IP. Interface is one of the basic functions of SoC and is a necessary function to realize the embedded CPU in the SoC to access peripherals or communicate with external devices and transmit data. There are many categories of interface IP, mainly including SerDes, USB, DDR, PCIe, MIPI, SATA, etc. In the interface IP market, Synopsys covers a wide range of categories and accounts for a high share.
simulates IP. Analog IP is an IP serving analog ICs. Analog chips can be mainly divided into power management chips and signal chain chips, which require corresponding IP core products. The power management IP includes LDO, DC/DC, AC/DC IP, etc., signal Chain IP includes such as AD/DA IP. In comparison, analog chips are more customized design or chip manufacturers' independent design, so the usage of analog IP is relatively small, mainly including Synopsys, MIPS (later acquired by Imagination) and other manufacturers.
Basic IP. Basic IP includes some storage IP, logical unit library and IO, etc. There are many types of storage IP, and the basic IP category mainly includes embedded memory categories, which can be divided into RAM, ROM and other categories. Different memories generate different storage IP requirements. The logic unit library includes the basic unit library that completes basic logic operations such as inverter, AND gate, register , selector, full adder , etc. IO units also fall into the category of basic IP, and IO units are used for chip signal input, output and power supply.
secure IP. Secure IP solutions mainly include root of trust, content protection, encryption, and security protocol accelerator that can be integrated into SoC. Secure IP integration solutions are mainly used to implement core content of multiple security standards, supporting confidentiality, data integrity, and users. /System authentication, undeniability and affirmative authorization.
SoC architecture IP. SoC architecture IP is used for SoC integration and is suitable for a variety of scenarios, including broadband communication, multimedia and embedded data acquisition, including data path IP, AMBA on-chip bus architecture, and microcontroller suitable for standard bus interfaces, etc.
Processor IP is the largest subclass of semiconductor IP. The main processor IPs can be divided into six categories: CPU IP, GPU IP, NPU IP, VPU IP, DSP IP and ISP IP. Among them, the CPU IP market is the largest, and it also has extremely high technical barriers and ecological barriers. The current CPU IP market It is basically monopolized by arm. Currently, domestic Guoxin Technology focuses on the research and development of embedded CPU IP. The remaining processor IPs are dedicated processor IPs. Imagination has a high market share in the GPU IP market. The other major overseas players are still ARM, Cadence and Synopsys. Domestic companies such as Xinyuan Co., Ltd. and Cambrian have NPU IPs. ISP IP, DSP IP, etc. are covered.
interface IP includes wired interface IP and wireless interface IP, which is the fastest growing subclass. The main interface IPs are wired interface IPs. Wired interface IPs include USB IP, PCIe IP, DDR IP, SATA IP, D2D IP, etc. Among them, the most applications are USB, DDR, PCIe, MIPI and Ethernet IP. Wireless interface IP mainly includes Bluetooth , Zigbee, Thread IP, etc. The main interface IPs are wired interface IPs. According to IPnest data, wired interface IP accounts for 95% of the interface IP market.
Physical IP can be divided into RF IP and digital-analog hybrid IP.Among them, physical interface IP such as DDR controller IP can also be classified as interface IP and is incorporated into the interface IP category in the industry statistical caliber of IPnest. Among physical IP, there are many types of digital-analog hybrid IP, including SoC subsystems, data interfaces, storage, unit libraries, and analog IP. Currently, some leading companies such as ARM, Synopsys and Cadence have layouts.
Physical IP Storage IP contains multiple categories and is used in semiconductor storage. Memory is divided into semiconductor storage, optical storage and magnetic storage according to storage media, and storage IP is used in semiconductor storage. semiconductor storage can be divided into volatile storage and non-volatile storage (Non-Volatile Memory, NVM). Volatile storage IP mainly includes other IPs such as SRAM and TCAM. NVM can mainly be programmed by the number of times It is divided into OTP (one-time programmable) and MTP (multiple programmable). Various types of memory have multiple implementation methods, and different memory has different characteristics in terms of read and write methods, programmability, storage methods, etc., so Different semiconductor IPs are required, and memory suitable for different scenarios supports the generation of multiple storage IPs. In addition to the three leading IP manufacturers in the storage IP market, SST has a leading technology position in the FLASH IP market.
is divided into IPnest caliber. Design IP can be divided into processor IP, interface IP, other physical IP and other digital IP. Among them, processor IP mainly includes CPU, GPU, DSP, ISP, etc. Interface IP belongs to one of the physical IPs and can be subdivided into wired interface IP and wireless interface IP. Physical IPs besides interface IPs mainly include SRAM memory compilers, OTP/MTP and FLASH and other memory compilers, physical libraries and general analog and mixed signal IPs, while other digital IPs are mainly infrastructure IPs and other IPs. According to the various IP market share data released by IPnest in 2020, the IP market share of CPUs is as high as 35.4%, which is dominant, but it has dropped by 6.8% compared with 2017; the market share of DSP and GPUs is 5.2% and 10.5 respectively, respectively. %, a total increase of 6.4% compared with 2017; the interface market share is 23.2%, an increase of 2.7% compared with 2017. According to IPnest's latest 2021 data, interface IP has been further improved.
3. The income-generating model of semiconductor IP mainly comes from authorized income and royalties
IP The income-generating model is early authorization and late royalties. The semiconductor IP licensing service mainly authorizes the verified, reusable and specific functions required for integrated circuit design to customers for use, and provides corresponding supporting software and technical support. The intellectual property authorization model is to charge a one-time fee when delivering IP to customers. The royalty payment model is to generate revenue at a rate after completing chip mass production and sales of customers. The royalty revenue will depend on the sales volume of IP products carried by customers.
All overseas leading companies adopt the revenue generation model of charging IP licensing fees and royalties. The three major leading companies, ARM, Synopsys and Cadence, all charge both pre-licensing and post-royal royalties for their IP products. Taking ARM as an example, the ARM IP core generates revenue through the first one-time licensing fee and the later chip production and the charging of royalties based on sales commissions. The other two leading companies, Synopsys and Cadence, also adopt similar business models, and domestic semiconductor IP companies also adopt With similar revenue models, many domestic IP companies also provide chip customization services based on independent design IP, such as Xinyuan Co., Ltd., Xindong Technology and Canxin Semiconductor.
Overseas manufacturers mainly have royalties, while domestic companies mainly contribute in authorization fees. Among the main IP players, overseas leaders such as ARM and Synopsys and more mature companies such as Liwang and other manufacturers. The IP business is mainly derived from royalties, relying on long-term and extensive IP products to obtain long-term and stable growth of cash flow , while domestic IP Manufacturers such as Xinyuan Co., Ltd. and Guoxin Technology, the current main revenue of IP business is still in terms of licensing fees.
. Semiconductor IP is the product of further refinement of vertical division of labor in the semiconductor industry
0 In the early stages of industrial development, due to the limited types of chips, the semiconductor chips at that time were at that time. The design of is relatively difficult, and most chip design companies can independently complete the entire chip design process, so there were almost no independent IP manufacturers at that time. With the development of integrated circuits, large-scale integrated circuits (VLSI) have gradually occupied the mainstream of the industry. The semiconductor industry follows the development of Moore's Law. The number of transistors integrated on a single chip has reached hundreds of millions, and the process division of semiconductor chips has become more and more Inventions are detailed, there are very few global IDM manufacturers, and the development of the chip industry tends to be more divided into labor and cooperation. The division of labor in the semiconductor industry has been further refined, and IP manufacturers have been born. Since the 1970s, the United States has transferred low profit links such as semiconductor system assembly and packaging testing to other regions such as Japan, and IDMs with chip design and production capabilities have developed rapidly. From the 1980s to the 1990s, the demand for technical connection and matching between chip design companies and wafer fabs gave birth to the chip design service industry. In the 21st century, terminal products have gradually become more complex and diverse, the difficulty of chip design has increased significantly, and R&D resources and costs have continued to increase, which has prompted the global semiconductor industry to continue to refine the division of labor, and the chip design industry has further split the semiconductor IP industry.
New product protocols, more functional integration and process iterations continue to create new IP needs. Component protocols in chips are constantly evolving, and different protocols will adapt to different IPs. For example, the USB interface in interface IP has been derived from 2.0, 3.1 and USB 4.0. PCIe 2 has also developed to PCIe 6. Different protocol versions are all Different IP requirements will be generated, and the integration functions in the chip are also increasing. For example, AI chips integrate neural network computing units in the chip, etc. The new integration functions will generate new IP requirements, and the process is also constantly iterating, and it has been developed. By 3nm, the evolution of the process will also drive the increase in the number of integrated transistors, and the increase in chip complexity will continue to create new IP demands.
2. The core of semiconductor IP is to improve chip design efficiency and reduce development costs
In the chip design process, the processes involved in ultra-large-scale integrated circuits are becoming more and more complex, and R&D costs are gradually increasing. At the same time, as the types of chips become more and more abundant, as well as advanced processes With the continuous emergence of semiconductor IP provides great convenience for simplifying the IC design process. Semiconductor IP and the IP companies that emerged are inevitable products of the development of the semiconductor industry. With advanced EDA tools, chip design has been achieved with the help of various IPs. Great convenience. The chip design cost has increased significantly under the advanced process of
. With the continuous iteration of the process, the cost of chip design software and hardware has increased significantly. The cost of design and development from 65nm to 5nm process has increased exponentially. Synopsys data estimates that the chip design cost can reach more than US$500 million under the 5nm process, of which the software cost and The proportion of hardware costs is basically the same, and the software costs mainly include verification, prototype and related software. The purchased IP can quickly complete the development of general modules in chip design, reduce chip design costs, and improve R&D efficiency.
As advanced processes evolve, the number of integrated IP cores has increased rapidly. The evolution of advanced processes and the reduction of line width have greatly increased the number of transistors in the chip, and the number of integrated IPs in a single chip has also increased significantly. According to the IBS report, taking the 28nm process node as an example, the number of IPs that can be integrated in a single chip is 87. When the process node evolves to 7nm, the number of integrated IPs reaches 178, and the number of integrated digital IPs and digital-analog hybrid IPs can be 126 and 92 respectively, totaling 218. The increase in the number of integrated IP cores will provide demand space for semiconductor IP cores in chip design, and the IP core market can benefit from the continuous iteration of advanced processes.
IP core and supplier ecosystem can reduce chip development costs and improve development efficiency.The development cost of SoC can be decomposed into IP qualification, SoC design, verification, physical design, software, prototype, confirmation and testing. The cost mainly comes from verification, software, SoC design and physical design, and the four types of costs account for a total of 91. %, and semiconductor IP will be applied to multiple links such as verification, chip design, physical design and IP verification, which is an important part of chip development cost. A good IP core ecosystem can help reduce chip development costs. Taking the ARM ecosystem as an example, the ARM ecosystem is wider and various IP cores are highly adaptable to development tools. According to ARM, it estimates that the IP ecosystem it provides can use 28nm chips. The total development cost reduction is more than 50%, among which the cost reduction is significant in terms of IP qualification, chip design, hardware verification, and software development and testing.
Shorten time to market is the primary source of demand for semiconductor IP. Several key factors in the selection of IP by chip design manufacturers: self-developed and purchased IP are time-to-market, availability of relevant designers, development costs, related development risks and product ecosystem. Outsourcing IP mainly shortens chip time-to-market , reducing development costs and using IP supplier ecosystems, etc., but with certain commercial risks, among which the purchase of IP is a primary consideration for chip design manufacturers.
3, the modular design of chip is an important trend in the future, and will continue to spawn new IP demand
drive modularization mainly has two main reasons. First, Moore's Law is moving forward and slowing down, and more heterogeneous integration is needed In order to implement system-on-chip, both SoC and Chiplets require the support of semiconductor IP; the second is the rise of DSA (Domain Specific Architecture). More Moore and More than Moore trends have spawned SoC and SiP technologies, both requiring the support of new semiconductor IPs. The evolution routes of integrated circuit technology in the post-Moore era can be divided into three categories: Continuing More Moore, More than Moore, and Beyond Moore. Beyond Moore is introducing quantum devices, single electronic devices, etc. A completely innovative electronic system, and in other directions of More Moore and More than Moore, the trends of miniaturization and diversification have spawned SoC and SiP technologies respectively. Technology such as SoC, Chiplets and 3D-Package all require new semiconductor IP support.
Post-Moore era relies on increasing transistor density to improve computing performance, and DSA (Domain Specific Architecture) is emerging. Moore's Law has been going on for decades, but it began to slow down around 2000, and by 2018, the predictions based on Moore's Law were 15 times different from the actual ability. Dennard scaling states that as the transistor density increases, the energy consumption per transistor will decrease, so the energy consumption on per 6 square millimeter on a silicon chip remains almost constant. And Denard's Law also failed around 2012, and there were obvious restrictions on the annual improvement of computer performance. Achieve higher performance improvements require new architectural approaches. Thus DSA began to rise. DSA (domain specific architecture) is a programmable processor customized for specific fields. It can be used to accelerate certain applications and achieve better performance. In fact, GPU is a product designed based on the DSA idea. Others Chips such as NPU, DPU and emerging AI chips are all products of DSA. Currently, manufacturers in the industry such as Google , Tesla, Cerebras, Oppo and other manufacturers are also promoting their DSA chips for their specific applications.
DSA has higher efficiency and lower energy consumption mainly comes from four aspects:
DSA can utilize more efficient parallel forms in specific utilization. For example, in many specific fields, SIMD (Single Instruction Multi-Data Stream) which is less flexible than MIMD (Multi-Instruction Multi-Data Stream), is acceptable, and SIMD only needs to process a single instruction within a clock step, thus Higher efficiency can be achieved.
DSA makes use of memory hierarchy more efficiently. The cost of memory access is much higher than that of arithmetic operations. For example, accessing a 32kbyte cache requires energy consumption equivalent to about 200 times that of 32-bit addition.While DSAs usually use memory levels that explicitly control motion by software, for suitable applications, the user-controlled memory can use less energy than caches.
DSA can reduce the accuracy of data used in specific fields. The number of CPU data bits used for general purpose computing is currently 64 bits, and in many specific fields of machine learning and graphical computing, 64 bits are higher than the required data accuracy.
DSA benefits from programs written in DSL (Domain-Specific Language). Applications written in DSL enable higher degree of parallelism, better memory structure and representation, and enable applications to map to domain-specific processors more efficiently.
Take Google TPU as an example, and its TPU is a DSA application. Unlike general CPUs, the core computing unit of the TPU is a matrix unit with 8-bit data accuracy, using more efficient pulsating arrays (Systolic Array) and SIMD control, so that the multiplication that the TPU can perform in a single clock cycle. The number is 100 times that of a general-purpose single-core CPU. The rise of DSA will form the demand for corresponding IP. The rise of the DSA concept will spawn dedicated chips in multiple specific fields, and the birth of such chips will also form corresponding IP requirements. For example, current GPU IP, NPU IP, VPU IP, etc. are essentially products under the DSA concept. As DSA applications become more extensive in the future, the required IP support will also continue to grow.
4. Chiplet industry trends bring new growth to the IP industry, and are expected to drive IP productization
Chiplet (core particle) is a kind of balanced computing performance and cost, improve design flexibility, and improve I P Module Economy and Reusability one of the new technologies. The implementation principle of Chiplet is similar to building blocks. Some chip dies that have been produced in advance on the process line to achieve specific functions are integrated and packaged together through advanced integration technologies (such as 3D integration, etc.), thereby forming a system chip.
Chiplet provides new development opportunities for IP suppliers. While inheriting the IP reusable features of SoC, Chiplet further opens up a new multiplexing mode of semiconductor IP, namely silicon wafer-level IP multiplexing. IPs with different functions, such as CPUs, memory, analog interfaces, etc., can flexibly select different processes for production separately, so that they can flexibly balance computing performance and cost, and achieve the optimal configuration of functional modules without being limited to fab process. The Chiplet model has the characteristics of short development cycle, strong design flexibility, and low design cost; it can centrally package commercial dies with specific functions from different process nodes, materials, functions, and suppliers to solve 7nm, 5nm and below processes The balance of performance and cost in nodes and effectively shortens chip design time and reduces risk. Chiplet's development and evolution have expanded business flexibility and development space as IP suppliers, especially IP suppliers with chip design capabilities.
UCIe Alliance was established to build Chiplet Internet specifications. In March 2022, the Chiplet Internet Standard UCIe (Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express) was officially established, with the initiators being AMD, arm, sun and moonlight, Google, Intel , Meta, Microsoft , Qualcomm , Samsung and TSMC, nine companies An industry giant covering chip design, software systems, foundry and packaging and testing. The UCIe Alliance is committed to implementing the Chiplet Internet specification. The current alliance members include international leaders such as Synopsys, Cadence, ADI, Botong , etc. Among domestic companies, Xinyuan Co., Ltd., Xinyaohui, Alibaba , Qiyi Moore and other companies are also added. Become the first domestic company to join the UCIe alliance.
5. The global IP market size has grown steadily, the processor IP market size is the largest, and the interface IP has the best growth potential
From the overall market perspective, the IP market size has steadily increased and the market growth rate has risen. The semiconductor IP market is weakly affected by the overall cyclical nature of the industry. The market size has maintained an upward trend year by year since 2015, and the growth rate has gradually increased after 2018. According to IPnest data, the global semiconductor IP nuclear market size in 2021 was US$5.45 billion, with a year-on-year growth rate from 6.0% in 2018 rose to 19.4% in 2021.It is expected that the market size will continue to expand steadily in the next few years. According to IBS data, the global semiconductor IP nuclear market size is expected to reach US$10.1 billion in 2027. The CAGR of IBS in 2018 to 2027 will reach 9%, among which the processor IP market is growing rapidly. The growth rate reached 10%.
Processor IP: The largest subclass, the processor IP is the category with the largest share in the semiconductor IP market. In 2020, the processor IP market accounts for 51% of the total market, and the market is mainly concentrated on CPUs with high value and high usage. , GPU. The processor IP market size has increased volatility, with the global processor IP market in 2021 reaching US$2.74 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16.6%.
interface IP: the fastest growing category in the future, the five largest interface IPs in the interface IP market are USB, PCIe, DDR, Ethernet and D2D, and MIPI. The five interface IP markets have seen rapid growth. The interface IP market in 2021 Total of US$1.377 billion, a year-on-year increase of 22.83%. IPnest expects the interface IP market to reach USD 2.5 billion by 2025, with a CAGR of 19% from 2020-2025.
Other physical IP and other digital IP: The interface IP contains some physical IP and digital IP such as DDR. Other physical IP departments mainly include digital-to-analog hybrid IP, storage compiler IP, radio frequency IP, OTP/MTP/Flash and other IP types. , IPnest data, the market size of other physical IPs in 2021 was US$893 million, an increase of 24.17% year-on-year. Other digital IPs include non-interface digital IPs such as basic IP. The market size in 2021 was US$438 million, a year-on-year increase of 17.70%.
. The global IP industry is highly concentrated in competition, and mergers and acquisitions in the industry are frequently
. The global semiconductor IP industry is highly concentrated, with CR3 reaching 66.2%. The IP industry has the first market share in ARM. ARM has an absolute advantage in processor IP and maintains a significant leading position in royalty revenue. Its market share in 2021 is 40.4%, and the second and third are Synopsys and Cadence respectively. Overall, it is highly concentrated among the top three players, with CR3 reaching 66.2% and CR10 reaching 79.3%. Domestic manufacturer Xinyuan Co., Ltd. occupied 2% of the shares in 2020, ranking seventh. In 2021, most IP manufacturers' revenue maintained a high growth rate, with the overall industry growing by 19.7% to US$5.45 billion.
IP The industry began to develop rapidly in the 1990s, with continuous mergers and acquisitions in the industry. ARM focuses on endogenous R&D, and Synopsys has acquired a large number of mergers and acquisitions to create the most complete product line. The industry development history can be divided into two stages: the industry brewing period and the industry explosion period.
industry brewing period (1980~1990). The three main leaders in the IP industry are ARM, Synopsys and Cadence. Synopsys and Cadence were both established in the 80s. Mentor Graphics, which occupied a leading position in the early stages of the industry's development, was also established in the 80s. The company was later acquired by Siemens. ARM predecessor Acorn was founded in 1978 and launched its first ARM CPU in 1985. By the 1990s IP industry was still mainly based on technology accumulation and brewing, and there were few related acquisition cases and representative products.
industry explosion period (1990~today). The industry explosion period was mainly in the 1990s. Since then, Synopsys has gradually begun to carry out large-scale acquisitions in the IP industry since 1990, and has acquired a wide product line through large-scale acquisitions. Currently, it is in multiple IP sub-markets represented by interface IP. Occupying a leading position in the industry. ARM focuses on endogenous R&D. ARM has acquired relatively low frequency during its 30-year development process, and has occupied the largest market share through its absolute advantage in the field of processor IP. Cadence only began to enter the IP field by acquiring Denali Software in 2010, and also made rapid breakthroughs through mergers and acquisitions, but its product line started late and had relatively fewer products and lower market share.
The main players in the industry have frequently changed, the pattern has gradually stabilized, and a few suppliers occupy the scattered niche market. The early major players in the industry were ARM, Synopsys, Rambus, TTPCom and Ceva. According to Gartner data, the industry CR3 and CR5 in 2002 were 38% and 49.7%, respectively, and the market competition landscape was still relatively scattered.After 20 years of acquisition and elimination, current industry players have been highly concentrated in the leaders, with CR3 and CR5 rising to 66.2% and 71.1% respectively. The three leaders have occupied most of the shares, and the rest of the players such as Imagination, SST, Ceva and eMemory. Gain a certain share in the leading advantages of GPU, storage IP and other specialized markets, and domestic manufacturers such as Cambrian and Xindong Technology also have certain leading advantages in the specialized market. The rapid development of domestic IP manufacturers and new technology trends such as AI, automotive intelligence, and Chiplet have brought certain new variables to the IP industry. Domestic IP manufacturers such as Xinyuan Stock Co., Ltd. have developed rapidly, and their market share has increased to seventh in 2020, and will continue to maintain a relatively leading level in 2021, with a global market share of 1.8%. The IP industry is currently benefiting from the promotion from downstream fields such as the generalization of AI applications and automotive intelligence. China is a global market in the new technology field, and domestic IP manufacturers are expected to benefit fully in building domestic supply chains for emerging markets. At the same time, new technological trends in the IP field such as Chiplet will also bring certain new variables to the competitive landscape of the semiconductor IP industry.
IP Leading manufacturers have a wide range of products, while other manufacturers focus on a few categories. After years of development, the three leading IP suppliers have accumulated a wide range of product portfolios. ARM, Synopsys and Cadence products basically cover most categories of IP, while other manufacturers such as SST, Imagination and CEVA are more focused on a certain product. Class IPs, such as SST, mainly have a leading position in storage IP, Imagination is the leader in GPU IP, and CEVA is the leader in DSP IP. Among domestic companies, Xinyuan Co., Ltd. is gradually expanding its product width and developing towards platform-based IP manufacturers, while other manufacturers such as Cambrian, Guoxin Technology, and Ruichengxin Micro are still relatively concentrated in their distribution.
2. As a tool provider, EDA company has natural advantages in entering IP. The leading EDA company has in-depth layout IP
Semiconductor IP is the product of the progress and development of integrated circuits, and together with EDA, it forms a powerful pillar of chip design. Semiconductor IP refers to a verified, reusable integrated circuit module with a certain specific function, usually developed by a third party. In the early stages of industrial development, due to the limited types of chips, the design of semiconductor chips at that time was relatively difficult, and most chip design companies could independently complete the entire chip design process, so there were almost no independent IP manufacturers at that time. With the development of integrated circuits, large-scale integrated circuits (VLSI) have gradually occupied the mainstream of the industry. The semiconductor industry follows Moore's Law. The number of transistors integrated on a single chip has reached hundreds of millions. The process division of semiconductor chips is becoming more and more detailed. The world is There are very few IDM manufacturers, and the development of the chip industry tends to be more divided into work and cooperation. In the chip design process, the processes involved in ultra-large-scale integrated circuits are becoming more and more complex, and R&D costs are gradually increasing. At the same time, with the increasing variety of chips and the continuous emergence of advanced processes, semiconductor IP provides a great opportunity to simplify the IC design process Convenience, semiconductor IP and the IP companies that emerged are inevitable products of the development of the semiconductor industry. With advanced EDA tools, chip design has achieved great convenience with the help of various IPs. EDA and IP have business synergy. EDA products are similar to IP core business models, and EDA manufacturers and IP manufacturers face the same customers. Providing EDA products and IP products to customers will bring greater value. Synopsys and Cadence, the leading EDA companies, both have in-depth layouts in the IP field, with market share in the second and third respectively. Simense EDA, the formerly Mentor graphics, also entered the IP field in the early stages of its establishment. Domestic EDA companies such as Huada Jiutian and Xin Vision also have some product lines in the IP field.
International leader EDA companies have made some arrangements in the IP field. The three major international EDA companies are Synopsys, Cadence and Mentor Graphics (now Siemense EDA). Synopsys has made early layout in the IP field. After launching its DesignWare series in 1992, it officially entered the IP field. It then relied mainly on a large number of acquisitions to expand. IP production line.Cadence also started with its EDA business. In 2010, it entered the IP industry through the acquisition of Denali. Later, it acquired several companies such as Tensilica to plan the processor IP field, acquired Nusemi to acquire SerDes IP, and its product line gradually expanded. Mentor Graphics also entered the IP industry early in its establishment. Mentor's main focus is on the EDA field. The development of IP business mainly relies on endogenous R&D, and its product line is also relatively sparse. It is leading in the early stages of the industry. The subsequent IP market share declines gradually. Faded out of the IP market, was acquired by Siemens in 2016, and then renamed Siemense EDA.
3, ARM: The core player of processor IP, the world's largest IP company,
products are concentrated in processors, and the IP stock is rich. ARM has accumulated many years of R&D in the IP field, and has a very rich IP product pool. There are more than 3,000 processor IP, physical IP and system IP. Its main processor products, Cortex-A, Cortex-R and Cortex-M series products, have also had multiple generations. Iterate products, rich IP savings will continue to contribute to income.
ARM was established in 1990. It relies on Apple to build processor IP barriers based on the ecosystem. ARM was formerly Acorn Company. It launched its first chip, Acorn RISC machine in 1985. Later, in 1990, the ARM R&D department independently established ARM company and obtained a stake in Apple. Apple's world's first PDA product uses ARM processor, and then ARM quickly expanded its market share with its open attitude towards developers and established its unique IP ecosystem. ARM was acquired by SoftBank in 2016 and is still a subsidiary of SoftBank.
IP The product has a long life cycle, and the continuous growth of authorizations has promoted a steady increase in revenue. Since ARM continues to charge royalties for authorized chips, most of the revenue sources come from IP stock products, and the IP product life cycle is relatively long. Among the ARM royalty revenue composition, the authorized contribution revenue from 1994-2010 exceeded 15%. At the same time, ARM authorization review has maintained growth, with 141 new processor authorizations generated in 2020, and the number of continued growth of authorizations will support performance improvement.
downstream market has grown steadily, and ARM is expected to benefit fully with its leading market share. The mobile market with the largest and highest market share in the downstream market of ARM IP is relatively saturated and has relatively stable growth. ARM expects the mobile application processor IP market size to reach US$43 billion in 2029, and the overall market is expected to reach US$232 billion. , the CAGR of ten years was 5.3%. As the leader in the IP market share, ARM is expected to fully benefit from industry growth.
chip shipments based on ARM have grown rapidly, with a cumulative number of authorizations reaching 1,931 copies. In 2020, ARM-based chip shipments increased significantly, exceeding 25 billion. The continuous growth of chip shipments will support royalty revenue. After ARM excludes some unprofitable IP authorizations, the cumulative number of authorized copies in fiscal year 2020 1931 copies.
benefited from the upward trend in the industry, with significant revenue growth in 21 years and overall gross profit margin was stable. The chip industry has been in a rising 21 year, and the downstream application markets of IP generally have a high growth rate, which has boosted ARM's revenue growth. ARM expects revenue to reach US$2.5 billion in 21 years, a year-on-year growth rate of 26.3%. At the same time, the ARM business model and product cost composition are relatively fixed, and the gross profit margin remains stable for a long time. According to the disclosed period data, the gross profit margin is stable at around 93%.
ARM royalties are the main source of income, and the Cortex-M series contributes the main royalty income in processor products. ARM is the leader in the IP royalty market and processor IP market, and royalty revenue also accounts for the main part of ARM's revenue sources. In FY2020Q3 (CY2020Q4), the royalty revenue accounted for 61.2%, followed by the authorization fee, accounting for 27.2%. In terms of the main processor IP products, ARM Cortex-M series IP mainly contributes to processor royalty revenue. In FY2020Q3, the Cortex-M series contributed 69% of processor royalty revenue.
4, Synopsys: Powerful EDA tool stickiness brings IP rapid growth
Synopsys was founded in 1986. Its three major business areas, EDA, IP and software integrity products are in the industry. First position.Synopsys has 35 years of R&D and experience accumulation in the field of EDA. It currently has the highest market share in the EDA market, and has also accumulated over the years in the fields of IP and software integrity products, and has the second largest market share in semiconductor IP.
three major business segments: EDA, IP and system integration and software integrity products. Synopsys EDA business mainly provides digital and IC custom design software, FPGA design, verification and manufacturing EDA software. The IP and system integration business provides a wide range of IP products and system integration solutions, and the software integrity sector provides software quality and safety-related software. As an upstream manufacturer of the semiconductor industry chain, Synopsys' products are widely used in many fields such as consumption, automobiles, and industry.
IP Product pool covers a wide range of contents. Synopsys IP products can be mainly divided into interface IP, analog IP, basic IP, security IP, processor IP and subsystem IP. There are a wide variety of interface IPs. Synopsys ranks first in the market share of interface, analog, embedded memory and physical IP. one.
large-scale mergers and acquisitions have created a leading position in the industry. Since its establishment, Synopsys has carried out more than 80 mergers and acquisitions. The targets cover IP, software security and quality, verification and prototype, silicon engineering and chip design companies. Synopsys also continues to acquire in the IP field. The two main acquisitions were the acquisition of inSilicon and in 2002. In 2010, it acquired Virage Logic and acquired embedded memory IP combinations, interface IP combinations, embedded storage, NVM and other IPs.
Revenue has grown steadily and interest rates are stable. Synopsys' operating income growth is relatively stable, and the company expects revenue to reach US$4.747-4.825 billion in fiscal year 2022, an increase of 14%-15% year-on-year. The gross profit margin and net profit margin are basically stable, with gross profit margin remaining around 77%, and the net profit margin is 18% in 2020/2021.
EDA contributes major revenue and expands its share of IP business. Synopsys' revenue mainly comes from EDA and IP and system integration sectors. The revenue growth rate of the EDA sector is relatively low. In 2021, EDA revenue was US$2.354 billion, a year-on-year increase of 12.1%, and the proportion dropped from 66% in 2017 to 56% in 2021. , IP and System Integration revenue in 2021 was US$1.417 billion, a year-on-year increase of 21%, and its share increased from 28% to 35%.
5, Cadence: The IP business started relatively late, and the product line covers processors and interfaces. IP
uses EDA and IP as cores to establish a three-layer business model. The first layer of Cadence business model is EDA software and IP, which provides digital design and approval, custom IC, verification, IP, and IC packaging design and analysis tools and services; the second layer is the system innovation sector, including for packaging ICs and The third layer provides solutions and services for the development of AI-enhanced systems for PCB packaging system design; the third layer provides solutions and services for developing AI-enhanced systems, and adds machine learning and deep learning capabilities to the Cadence technology portfolio to enable IP and Tools are more automated and produce optimization results faster.
IP reserves are relatively small, and they are divided into two categories: design IP and processor IP. Cadence divides its IP products into two categories: design IP and Tensilica processor IP. Design IP mainly includes interface IP, 112G/56G SerDes, PCIe and CXL, storage IP and Chiplet. Processor IP includes AI IP, Xtensa controller and some DSP IP.
was founded in 1982, and EDA started with a large number of mergers and acquisitions to expand its business lines. Cadence is formed by the merger of ECAD and SDA companies established in 1982 and 1983 respectively. It focused on back-end design tools in the early stage. Since its establishment, it has gradually expanded its business lines such as IP and system design through a large number of mergers and acquisitions. Currently, it is in EDA and All IP fields are in the leading position.
Revenue and net profit have steadily increased. Cadence's operating income continued to grow steadily, with a CAGR of 10.5% from 2016 to 2021, reaching US$2.99 billion in 2021, and net profit also maintained steady growth. The abnormal movement of net profit in 2019 comes from income tax compensation. In 2021, the company achieved a net profit of US$696 million. , a year-on-year increase of 17.8%.
revenue mainly comes from EDA software, and IP accounts for a small share. Cadence's five major product lines have relatively balanced revenue contributions, with the main source of revenue being EDA software, and the overall contribution of IP revenue was small. In 2021, IP products achieved revenue of US$390 million, accounting for 13% of the total revenue share, an increase of 3.4% year-on-year. IP revenue Growth has slowed down.
6, Imagination: Expand
Imaginaiton from GPU IP to multi-type processor IP to expand
Imaginaiton to the leader in GPU IP. Imagination's core technology and main products are GPU IP. The current Imagination product portfolio has gradually expanded from GPU category to CPU and AI chip IP. In terms of GPU IP, Imagination currently focuses on IMG CXT series products, IMG-B and IMG-A series products, and launches the Catapult CPU series in 2021 to expand the CPU market. In addition, in the field of AI chips, Imagination has also launched 8 series of products including IMG 4NX-MC4 and IMG 4NX-MC8, which are used in many fields such as ADAS, data centers, and mobile devices.
Imagination and ecosystem partners, including engines, tools and application developers, maintain in-depth cooperation. At the same time, Imagination is also a member of standard organizations such as Khronos, participating in API specifications such as OpenGL/OpenGL ES/Vulkan/OpenCL, and its PowerVR GPU products are efficiently compatible with it. Currently, Imagination partners cover many upstream and downstream manufacturers in the industry chain such as Google, Tencent, TSMC, LINUX, etc.
7, Ceva: a supplier focusing on signal processing IP, benefiting from the trend of AI and digital intelligence
CEVA focusing on signal processing IP, and its product portfolio mainly includes DSP IP, AI IP, wireless platform, sensing fusion and other IPs. CEVA was founded in 2002 and occupies a leading position in the DSP IP market. Its product application fields include consumer electronics, automobiles, industry and the Internet of Things, etc., and mainly has a high share of DSP IP in the mobile phone field.
Currently, there are more than 400 CEVA authorized contracts, and their cooperative customers include the world's leading semiconductor and consumer electronics manufacturers, such as Intel, MediaTek, Nokia, Broadcom, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Toshiba, etc. A wide range of cooperative customer circles have continuously provided product royalty income to CEVA while also establishing an ecological circle of CEVA IP.
CEVA IP contract number and authorized equipment are both showing an increasing trend. The number of new CEVA IP authorizations for the whole year was 73, and the shipments of authorized equipment for the whole year were 1.6 billion units, both showing an annual growth trend. The increase in the number of authorized and their shipments will provide support for CEVA's future royalty revenue. Judging from the distribution of authorized customers' fields, most of them are Bluetooth and WiFi IP authorizations, reaching 41 in 2021. The shipment IP of authorized devices is also mainly derived from Bluetooth and WiFi in mobile devices, reaching 830 million and 1.8 in 2021 respectively. 100 million units.
's revenue growth was relatively steady, and its strong investment in R&D resulted in a sluggish net profit performance. CEVA's revenue has generally maintained an upward trend since 2008. In 2021, it achieved operating income of US$120 million, a year-on-year increase of 22.7%, and achieved a net profit of US$400,000 for the whole year. The main reason is that CEVA's R&D investment has been large and its net profit has been Maintained at a low level.
CEVA report revenue sectors are divided into two major sectors: royalty, authorization and NRE. Among them, the NRE (Non Recurring Engineering) sector mainly undertakes revenue from chip design projects including SoC, FPGA, RF, analog, etc. Since 2017, the revenue share of the authorized and NRE sectors has expanded, accounting for 59% in 2021, and the royalty revenue sector It is highly correlated with the number of authorized equipment shipments and maintains a slight growth trend.
8, SST: Focus on storage IP, and its technical capabilities are leading in the industry.
SST focuses on storage IP and launches independent memory products. SuperFlash is the core technology of SST and has been used on the 500nm to 28nm process platforms of most fabs and IDMs. At the same time, SST's memory products including EEPROM, NOR Flash, EERAM and SRAM are also used as a separate item in Microchip. Production line sales. The memBrain technology was launched in 2017 and several companies have adopted the solution for AI computing. In addition, SST also provides design services for Flash macro design, identification and testing.
SST was established in 1989. Since its establishment, it has achieved rapid growth in revenue based on its leading technological advantages in the field of NOR Flash, from US$24 million in 1993 to US$1.72 billion before being acquired by Microchip in 2009, with a CAGR of 31%. In 2010, SST was acquired by Microchip, and then SST focused on the research of SuperFlash storage IP technology. The SST storage products based on SuperFlash were absorbed into an independent production line by Microchip for sale. In 2017, it launched memBrain and expanded to the AI chip field.The main advantage of
SuperFlash technology is its low erase time, which is significantly ahead in the industry. SuperFlash, the core technology of SST, has significant advantages in erasing time. According to Microchip data, SuperFlash can achieve 2x, 20x and 1000x performance advantages on Sector Erase, Block Erase and Full Chip Erase, respectively, and optimize power consumption. The effect is also significant. Reduced erase time can directly lead to cost savings, Microchip computing With SuperFlash technology, a cost saving of $0.192 per unit of product is saved.
9, eMemory: Focus on Logic NVM IP
Liwang was founded in 2000 and has been focusing on Logic NVM IP since its establishment. Currently, Liwang's business segments are divided into four major sectors: OTP, MTP, PUF and other special categories of IP. Liwang has rich customer resources, and its main customers include 25 Foundry, 10 major IDMs around the world, and many Fables manufacturers, including TSMC, Renesas, Toshiba, UMC, GF and other strong customers. With its leading technology advantages, Liwang has achieved 43 million chip shipments equipped with its IP, with more than 1,950 customers and more than 5,950 authorizations.
Liwang relies on authorization fees and royalties to generate revenue, and its main customers are IC design companies and Foundry. In terms of business model, Liwang cooperates with Foundry and design companies. In terms of Foundry, it authorizes the company's IP modules and provides technical support to the foundry factory to help the foundry build an open chip design platform. Foundry provides foundry services to IC design companies and design The company can complete the development on the foundry platform, and Liwang collects authorization fees and royalties at the same time, and chip design companies also charge authorization fees and royalties through IP authorization.
Revenue and net profit growth are steady. Liwang achieved operating income of RMB 330/328/412 million, respectively, with a year-on-year growth rate of RMB 9.0%/-0.5%/+25.7%, and a net profit of RMB 137/126/164 million, with a year-on-year growth rate of RMB 4.0%/ -7.9%/+30.3%. Revenue and net profit basically maintained steady growth, and the semiconductor industry's prosperity increased significantly in 2020.
Liwang's operating income mainly comes from royalties. Royalties account for the majority of Liwang's revenue structure. Since 2015, the proportion of royalties and royalties have been roughly stable at about 70%, and the overall authorization fees and royalties have grown steadily.
4. The domestic IP industry has a lot of room for domestic substitution, and the focus is on building an IP ecosystem
. The domestic production rate of semiconductor IP is low, and the core IP needs to be broken through
From the overall perspective of the domestic IC market, the domestic self-sufficiency rate is relatively low. According to IC insights data, the global and Chinese IC market sizes were US$395.7 billion and US$143.4 billion respectively in 2020, and the production volume of IC companies in China was US$22.7 billion, accounting for 15.9% of the Chinese IC market and is expected to increase in 2025 To 19.4%, China's independent IC companies achieved sales of US$8.3 billion in 2020, accounting for 36.6% of the production volume of all domestic IC companies, while accounting for only 5.8% of the overall domestic IC market, with a low self-sufficiency rate, which is far from realizing domestic production. The IC supply chain is independent and controllable, but there is still a long distance.
IP There are fewer domestic related companies in the nuclear market and have a low market share. The semiconductor IP nuclear industry has high technical barriers and ecological barriers, and its market share is highly concentrated in leading overseas companies. There are few domestic representative companies, mainly Xinyuan Shares, Cambrian, etc., and its market share is low. In 2020 Xinyuan The shareholding market share is only 1.8%, and the independent and controllable IP core needs to be broken through, and there is a lot of room for domestic substitution.
2. The rise of domestic OEM factories is expected to drive the construction of domestic IP ecological chain
Domestic OEM factories gradually have an international competition level, helping the construction of national evolving chains. Domestic foundry factories are gradually rising, and companies such as SMIC and Huahong Group have gradually gained international competition levels. According to IC insights data, the global market share of domestic foundry increased from 7.2% in 2011 to 8.5% in 2021. , and is expected to increase to 8.8% in 2026. According to DITITIMES data, domestic representative companies SMIC and Huahong Group have entered the top ten market share, with market share reaching 5.7% and 3.1% respectively. The rapid development of domestic foundry factories will have a boost to the upstream semiconductor IP industry and drive the construction of the domestic industry's ecological chain.
OEM factory has a close cooperative relationship with IP suppliers, building an open design platform for customers.Fabs are directly connected to chip design manufacturers, and an open and easy-to-use chip design platform is one of the core competitiveness of foundries. In order to reduce design obstacles, improve first-time success rate, shorten design, mass production and time to market, foundries and EDA / Upstream manufacturers such as IP work closely together to provide comprehensive IP and design tool support on the process platform. Taking TSMC as an example, TSMC OIP (Open Innovation Platform) platform is a comprehensive IC design platform that covers a comprehensive IP combination developed by TSMC or third-party, as well as EDA, VCA and DCA tools provided by partners. In terms of IP support, many leading IP manufacturers have joined the TSMC IP Alliance. In 2021, TSMC's self-developed and its IP alliance can support more than 40,000 IP types. The development and competitiveness of foundries will be inseparable from close cooperation with IP suppliers. The rapid development of domestic foundries will also provide opportunities for domestic IP suppliers.
SMIC IP supports a wide range of support and provides multiple development platforms. As the leader of domestic foundry, SMIC has more than 1,000 internal self-developed IPs in terms of IP support, more than 50 cooperative IP suppliers, and more than 800 IPs provided by partners. IP types cover unit libraries, analog/mixed signals. IP, high-speed interface IP, embedded processor and DSP IP, embedded storage IP and RF IP, and based on these IP categories, IP application development platforms are provided, including digital home IP platform, mobile storage IP platform, and data center IP platform. , mobile computing IP platform and Internet of Things IP platform, etc. provide customers with sufficient IP library support for designing multi-field solutions.
IP Ecological Alliance has grown, including many domestic IP manufacturers. SMIC's cooperative IP manufacturers include ARM, Synopsys, Cadence, Imagination, Siemens, CEVA, SST and other leading international IP manufacturers. At the same time, in terms of support for domestic supply chains, SMIC's cooperative IP manufacturers also include Ruxinyuan. Many domestic manufacturers such as Co., Ltd., Xindong Technology, and Orange Technology.
3. AI and automotive intelligence bring good development opportunities to domestic IP, expanding from single category to IP platform
China is one of the main markets for automotive intelligence, and the domestic intelligent car industry chain is developing rapidly with the help of it. Automobile is one of the main downstream application fields of semiconductor IP, and the trend of automotive intelligence is the main increase in the current automotive field. Automobile intelligence is mainly reflected in the new autonomous driving and intelligent cockpit functions of automobiles. In terms of autonomous driving, IHS data , the global autonomous driving scale will be US$50 billion in 2020, and is expected to reach US$560 billion in 2035, with a CAGR of 17.5%. Among them, the domestic autonomous driving market is one of the most important markets worldwide. The market size in 2020 was 137.6 billion yuan, and it is expected to maintain rapid growth in the next few years. While the level of intelligent driving is gradually increasing, the function of smart cockpits is also increasing. Rich, the chip performance requirements for various cabin requirements are gradually increasing. The domestic trend of automotive intelligence will bring incremental growth to all links of the automotive industry chain, including the semiconductor IP industry.
AI applications are constantly expanding, and the development of AI chips requires new semiconductor IP core support. AI technology can be widely used in multiple fields. While AI applications are gradually expanding, the demand for AI chips has also gradually increased, and the market size has expanded rapidly. The global and domestic AI chip markets were US$11 billion and RMB12.2 billion in 2019 respectively. It is expected to be 2024 The annual average will reach US$63 billion and RMB78.5 billion, respectively, with a 5-year CAGR of 42% and 45% respectively. The rapid development of the AI chip market will require new related AI IP core support. At present, many domestic and foreign IP core manufacturers are actively deploying in the AI IP core field, including Cadence, CEVA, SST, Xinyuan Co., Ltd., Cambrian, etc.
Currently, many domestic and foreign IP manufacturers are actively planning to deploy in the AI field. ARM, Synopsys and Cadence have all launched NPU IPs, among which the AI computing power provided by ARC NPX6 launched by Synopsys in 2022 is currently the industry-leading industry, and can reach 250TOPS or more at 5nm 1.3GHz main frequency.Other manufacturers such as SST, CEVA and Imagination have also launched NPU IP, neural network compiler or AI processor IP, among which SST is still focusing on the field of storage IP. The memBrain it launched is a neuromorphic analog storage IP, which can be used to enhance the edge. end reasoning ability. Domestic AI IP layout manufacturers are mainly Xinyuan Stock and Cambrian, and their main products are NPU IP, etc.
4. Design service business drives domestic IP demand, and is expected to achieve the coordinated development of design services and semiconductor IP
The domestic chip design industry will develop rapidly, promoting the growth of IP demand. Chip design companies are direct customers of semiconductor IP manufacturers, and the number of chip design companies in China is increasing rapidly. Data released by ICCAD shows that since 2016, the number of chip design companies in my country has increased significantly, with only 736 in 2015 and 1,780 in 2019, with an average annual compound growth rate of 24.71%. The sales scale of the design industry increased from RMB 80.9 billion in 2013 to RMB 251.9 billion in 2018, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 25.50%. The rapidly developing chip design industry in China will directly drive the growth of IP demand.
IP manufacturers simultaneously deploy chip design services and mass production services. While the rapid development of the domestic chip design industry has put a driving force on the IP industry, many domestic semiconductor IP manufacturers are also extending to downstream businesses, providing chip customization services to customers based on their own self-developed IPs or some outsourcing IPs. Taking Xinyuan Co., Ltd. as an example, in addition to authorizing its own IP products, Xinyuan Co., Ltd. also provides chip customization services. Chip customization services include chip design services and chip mass production services. The chip design business mainly refers to providing chip design processes according to customer requirements. , that is, some or all services from chip definition to sample production process. Chip mass production business mainly refers to providing entrusted wafer factories for wafer manufacturing, entrusted packaging and testing factories for packaging and testing according to customer requirements, and providing production management services in the above process.
core stocks: a leading domestic IP company, one-stop chip customization service and IP business development
core stocks were established in 2001. Its unique business model is called SiPaaS (Silicon Platform as a Service) model, that is, with self-developed semiconductor IP as the core, it provides one-stop chip customization services and semiconductor IP authorization services. Its business scope covers consumer electronics, automotive electronics, computers and peripherals, industrial, data processing, Internet of Things and other industries. field. SiPaaS service model. The company's business structure is divided into one-stop chip customization services and semiconductor IP authorization services. In addition to IP authorization services similar to overseas companies, Xinyuan Co., Ltd. also provides one-stop chip customization services, which can be divided into chips according to different links of the service. Design services and chip mass production services. Rich IP reserves and build a solid business core. The core of the company's profit model lies in its self-developed IP types. The company currently has six major processor IPs, including graphics processors, neural network processors, display processors, video processors, digital signal processors, and image signal processors, with more than 1,400 numbers. Analog hybrid IP and RF IP, as well as multiple SoC design base IP. According to IPnest statistics, Xinyuan is the number one semiconductor IP licensed service provider in mainland China in 2019 and ranked seventh in the world. Among them, the company's graphics processor (GPU, including image signal processor ISP) IP and digital signal processor ( DSP) IP ranks in the top three in the world respectively; the company's video processor (VPU) IP is also the world's leading, serving a variety of products from many international industry giants.
net profit loss continued to narrow, and the loss was turned around in 2021. From the perspective of company revenue, except for the slight decline in terminal customer sales in 2018, the remaining years maintained rapid growth, reaching 1.51 billion yuan in 2020. At the same time, the net profit loss attributable to shareholders gradually decreased, and the losses in 2020 were reduced To 2.56 billion yuan. According to the company's 2021 announcement, the company's revenue in 2021 was 2.14 billion yuan and its net profit attributable to shareholders was 13.29 million yuan, a loss-making turnover for the first time.
IP The proportion of authorized revenue has gradually expanded, contributing to the main gross profit. Since 2016, the revenue share of the company's IP licensing business has gradually expanded, from 28% in 2016 to 33% in 2021, with the growth mainly coming from the service model of knowledge licensing.From the perspective of gross profit, the gross profit margin of chip design and chip mass production services remained below 20%. The gross profit is mainly contributed by IP authorization. Due to differences in business models, IP authorization services have the characteristics of high gross profit margin, and their costs are mainly only project technology Support labor costs, the overall gross profit margin remains above 90%, and the proportion of IP authorization in 2021 is 78% of the company's gross profit.
fee rate is generally stable, and gross profit margin is on the rise. The company's 2016-2021 fee rate remained stable overall. The increase in R&D fee rate in 2020 was due to the company's expansion of R&D team. The increase in R&D personnel of 168 people has led to an increase in R&D personnel. In 21 years, with the company's rapid growth in revenue, the rate has declined. The company's overall gross profit margin maintained an upward trend. The company's gross profit margin was 45% in 2020. The slight decline in 2021 was due to the increase in the proportion of chip customization business with low gross profit margins.
Cambrian: Deeply cultivate terminal intelligent processor IP, gradually promote commercialization and implementation
focuses on cloud-edge-end intelligent chips, with three business lines. Cambrian's main business is to develop, design and sales of artificial intelligence core chips in various cloud servers, edge computing devices, and terminal devices, as well as providing customers with rich chip products and system software solutions. At present, the company's main product lines include cloud product lines, edge product lines, IP licensing and software. The three major business lines build a full-process software development platform. Developers can realize the entire process from model training to model inference through the Cambrian software development platform, which is more convenient and efficient, speed up the implementation of end-to-end services, reduce the cumbersome processes between model training and model deployment, and reduce learning costs. , development costs and operation costs.
Cambrian's terminal intelligent processor IP products mainly include 1A, 1H and 1M series, which were launched in 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively. The IP covers the artificial intelligence computing power requirements in different gears in the range from 0.5TOPS to 8TOPS. The size of its on-chip cache can also be configured according to requirements. The company's smart processor IP can be integrated into mobile phone SoC chips and various IoT SoCs.
business continues to expand to drive high revenue growth. Cambrian's revenue has grown rapidly since 2018. The company achieved revenue of RMB 440 million, RMB 460 million and RMB 720 million respectively from 2019 to 2021, a year-on-year increase of 280%, 3.4% and 57.1%. Cambrian's revenue in 2018 , the high revenue growth in 2019 and 2021 comes from new IP business expansion customers Huawei HiSilicon, intelligent computing cluster system scale growth, edge-end smart chips and accelerator cards respectively, and the continuous expansion of customers and businesses drive revenue to maintain High growth rate. At the same time, Cambrian R&D expenses have continued to maintain a high level, resulting in a loss in net profit since 2017, and the net profit attributable to shareholders in 2021 was -825 million yuan.
IP business has been declining year by year. The company's initial business IP revenue accounted for a large proportion, contributing 98% of revenue in 2017. In 2018, the company's smart chips and accelerator cards gradually began to increase in volume. The reason for the relatively high IP revenue in 2018 was to achieve the goal of achieving the Huawei HiSilicon's authorization, authorization revenue and royalty revenue are both high. Subsequently, customer expansion was limited from 2019 to 2021, and the authorization fees were small. IP revenue mainly comes from royalty revenue, and it shows a downward trend year by year. IP business is realized in 2021. Income of 6.87 million yuan.
R&D expenses are high, resulting in negative net profit margin. Cambrian gross profit margin is in a downward trend year by year, mainly due to the expansion of shares of relatively low-profit products. Cambrian gross profit margin was 62% in 2021. The higher management fees in 2017 and 2019 were mainly due to large-scale share payments, and in 2020, the Overall, it has stabilized in 2021. At the same time, the company's R&D expenses rate are relatively high, continuing to maintain at a level of above 150%, resulting in a negative net profit margin, and the net profit margin in 2021 is -115%.
Guoxin Technology: an independent and controllable embedded CPU core provider
Guoxin Technology's main products and services include three major businesses: IP authorization, chip customization services, and independent chip and module products. The company's core technology is independent IP The library provides chip customization services based on independent IP. The chip customization services include customized chip design services and customized chip mass production services. At the same time, Guoxin Technology also provides independent chip and module products, and the products are mainly used in information security, automotive electronics and industry. There are three key areas: control, edge computing and network communication.
IP service provides embedded CPU core products and SoC design platforms. Based on the three instruction sets of M*Core, PowerPC and RISC-V, Guoxin Technology has designed more than 40 CPU cores in eight series with independent intellectual property rights. In addition to IP core authorization, the company is based on independent and controllable embedded CPU cores. , independently developed peripheral application IP modules and combined with some peripheral IP modules purchased externally, we have established three major SoC chip design platforms for information security, automotive electronics and industrial control, edge computing and network communication.
was founded in 2001 and has completed the research and development of more than 40 CPU cores based on three major instruction sets. Since its establishment, the company has continued to maintain R&D and innovation. It has started to develop embedded CPUs for Motorola M*Core, IBM PowerPC and RISC-V instruction sets in 2001, 2010 and 2017, and launched the SoC design platform based on the corresponding IP.
Revenue and profit growth has been steady, and its performance has been outstanding in 21 years. Guoxin Technology's business operation is in good condition. All business segments of the company have maintained relatively stable growth over the years. In 2021, it achieved total revenue of 410 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 57%, and a net profit of 70.2 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 53.5%, with a relatively high growth rate.
Independent chips and module products are rapidly increasing in volume, the main downstream areas are information security, and IP revenue continues to grow. Guoxin Technology's independent chip products have maintained rapid growth since 2019. The slight decline in 2020 is due to the decline in sales of financial security chips affected by policies. It continues to rise in 2021, and the proportion of contribution of independent chips and module products has reached 54.2%. Among them, independent chips and module products are mainly used in the field of information security, while IP products mainly serve customers in the fields of automotive electronics and industrial control.
independent chips and modules have increased their gross profit margin and improved rates. The decline in the company's gross profit margin in 2021 was due to the rapid increase in the volume of independent chips and modules with low gross profit margins. The gross profit margin for the whole year was 53%, the net profit margin was 17.2%, and the net profit margin was basically the same. The expenses of Guoxin Technology continued to grow on the three fees, while the continued expansion of revenue led to a decline in the rate.
Ruichengxinwei: semiconductor physical IP and chip customization service provider
Ruichengxinwei is a physical IP provider with innovative capabilities. The company is committed to realizing people, people, things, things and things in the era of Internet of things. The comprehensive connection between the two countries provides leading physical IP solutions for promoting the development of the digital economy and building a digital China. The company's main business is to provide semiconductor IP design, authorization and related services required for integrated circuit products. The main products and services include analog and digital-to-analog hybrid IP, embedded storage IP, wireless radio frequency communication IP and wired connection interface IP and other semiconductor IP. Authorized service services and chip customization services with physical IP technology as their core competitiveness. In view of the characteristics of the Internet of Things application scenarios, the company continues to break through technical bottlenecks in chip power consumption, area and cost, and continues to carry out low-power consumption, small area and high-reliability semiconductor IP technology research and development and innovation. After years of development, the company has more than 500 physical IPs covering more than 20 wafer factories around the world, including 14nm~180nm and other process nodes, and has accumulated and built a variety of smart cities, smart homes, industrial Internet, wearable devices, etc. IoT chip IP solution helps partners to complete chip design efficiently and securely, shorten chip product verification and time to market, improve mass production yield, reduce development costs, and strengthen the personalization, richness and market of IoT product ecosystem Competitiveness. According to the IPnest report, Ruicheng Xinwei is the second largest semiconductor IP supplier in mainland China and the 21st largest global semiconductor IP supplier.As one of China's major physical IP suppliers, Ruichengxinwei has significant competitive advantages in the field of physical IP subdivisions such as analog and digital-to-analog hybrid IP, wireless radio frequency communication IP. Among them, the company's analog and digital-to-analog hybrid IP ranks first in China and third in the world, with a global market share of 6.6% in 2021; the company's wireless radio frequency communication IP ranks first in China and third in the world, with a global market share of 2021. 4.5%.
Ruichengxinwei was founded in 2011 and is committed to the design and licensing of integrated circuit intellectual property (IP) products, and provides chip customization services. Based on low-power technology, the company has gradually developed and built a product structure mainly based on ultra-low power analog and digital-to-analog hybrid IP, high-reliability storage IP, high-performance RF IP and high-speed interface IP, and has domestic and foreign patents. 100 pieces, has established partnerships with more than 20 fabs worldwide, and has developed more than 500 IPs, serving hundreds of integrated circuit design companies around the world. Their products are widely used in 5G, Internet of Things, smart homes, automotive electronics, Smart power supply, wearable, medical electronics, industrial control and other fields.
Niuxin Semiconductor: Domestic Interface IP Supplier
Company focuses on interface IP, covering product lines such as SerDes and DDR. Niuxin Semiconductor has a mainstream advanced process layout of mid-to-high-end interface IPs such as SerDes and DDR. In addition to SerDes and DDR IPs, Niuxin also has the ability to design backend 7nm and above, providing one-stop customization from Spec import to mass production. Chip solution. The products are widely used in 5G communication, AI computing, smart terminals, network switching, base station chips, cloud computing, servers, storage and other fields, and serve more than 100 customers in total. Niuxin Semiconductor cooperates with five major Foundry factories, SMIC, UMC, TSMC, Samsung and HLMC. It has independent and controllable core technologies and has applied for a number of patents.
SerDes IP has the leading level in China. 28G/32G SerDes IP is one of the representative products of Niuxin. 28G SerDes technology is a key interconnection technology in wired and wireless communication applications. Niuxin Semiconductor is based on the domestic SMIC14nm process and successfully verified silicon in one piece, becoming an industry The only domestic long-distance 28G SerDes IP.
Niuxin has joined the UCIe alliance to jointly build a Chiplet ecosystem. In March 2022, more than ten industry giants including Intel, AMD, ARM, Qualcomm, Samsung, TSMC, Sun and Moonlight, Google, Meta, Microsoft and other companies jointly established the UCIe Industry Alliance, which aims to establish a unified die-to-die mutual Connecting standards to create a Chiplet ecosystem that is both open and interoperable. In April 2022, Niuxin Semiconductor joined UCIe and became the first domestic IP company to join, jointly participating in the standardization research and application of Chiplet interface specifications.
号网站: high-speed hybrid circuit IP, chip customization service and GPU product provider
provides three categories of products: high-speed hybrid circuit IP, chip customization service and GPU. Xindong Technology focuses on three major tracks including computing, storage and connection, and provides mainstream process factories (TSMC/Samsung/GF/SMIC/Unhua Electronics/Intel/Huali) from 55 nanometers to 5 nanometers of IP and chip customization. Solution. The company was established in 2007 and has authorized to support more than 6 billion high-end SoC chips worldwide to enter mass production. Historical customers include Rockchip, Quanzhi, Junzheng, AMD, Microsoft, Amazon, Qualcomm, ON Semiconductor and many other customers. Well-known company.
company launches the first generation of GPU products. The company's Fenghua No. 1 single-chip A card rendering capability reaches 160GPixel/sec, and the FP32 floating point performance reaches 5T FLOPS. It supports Linux/Loongson/Windows/Android operating system graphics framework, and supports 4 channels of 4K@60, 16 channels of 1080P@60fps or 32-channel 720P@30fps, AI performance is 25TOPS.
has launched its own Chiplet solution. After the release of the UCIe standard, Xindong Technology launched the independently developed Chiplet solution Innolink, which is compatible with the UCIe standard, which has been successfully mass-produced and verified in advanced processes.Xindong comprehensively considers the technical characteristics of SerDes and DDR, and adopts DDR in Innolink-B/C to implement it in a DDR manner, providing a high-speed, high-density, and high-bandwidth connection solution based on GDDR6/LPDDR5 technology, and is aimed at long-distance PCB and cable. Chiplet connection, Innolink-A provides a connection scheme based on SerDes differential signal to compensate for signal attenuation of long paths. Xindong Technology's forward-looking layout of DDR technology has given the company a first-mover advantage in Chiplet products and is currently at the industry-leading level.
Canxin Semiconductor: IP authorization and chip customization service provider
Canxin Semiconductor provides IP authorization and chip customization services. Canxin Semiconductor's YOU series IP and YouSiP (Silicon-Platform) solutions have been fully verified by slitting tests and can be widely used in 5G, AI, high-performance computing, cloud and edge computing, network, Internet of Things, industrial Internet and Consumer electronics and other fields. The YOU series IPs include DDR, SerDes, RF, USB, MIPI, etc. Canxin also develops YouSiP platform solutions based on mainstream manufacturers such as ARM, Synopsys, Cadence, and self-developed IPs, and provides related design services.
Canxin was founded in 2008. Its main business was chip design at the beginning. In 2016, it officially launched its own IP brand YouIP. After that, through continuous endogenous R&D and expansion of independent IP, it has obtained the most powerful technology enterprise of CIDI Consulting Consulting and EE Times. It has won the qualifications of Shanghai and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's specialized and specialized enterprise certification, which to a certain extent reflects the company's technical advantages.
Canxin IP products and chip design cooperation foundry is SMIC. In 2010, the company received investment from SMIC and has a deep strategic cooperative relationship with SMIC. All IP core products are completed in SMIC processes. At the same time, the company's chip design service partners include international mainstream IP manufacturers ARM, Synopsys and Cadence, as well as packaging and testing plants such as Amkor and Sun Moonlight.
号电影: Focus on interface IP, provide IP upgrade service
focuses on interface IP, and also provides IP upgrade service. Xinyaohui's current IP combination focuses on interface IP, including DDR, PCIe, HDMI, USB, SATA, MIPI and SerDes IP. In addition to related IP authorization services, Xinyaohui also provides IP upgrade services, mainly for chip debugging and IP sub- Four types of services include system, system design and performance analysis and IP hardening.
reached a cooperation with Synopsys and obtained DesignWare authorization. In 2021, Xinyaohui established a strategic partnership with Synopsys. Synopsys authorized Xinyaohui to use its 12-28nm process technology and the series of IP cores of DesignWare USB, DDR, MIPI, HDMI and PCI Express that are adapted to domestic chip manufacturing processes. After obtaining the authorization of Synopsys Technology, Xinyaohui will use these Synopsys silicon-verified interface IP cores to provide targeted customization and optimize IP for domestic chip manufacturing companies to enhance the automation level of chip design and improve the The level of verification of customer systems provides acceleration for the integration and deployment of customer products.
and Xinwei: Focus on high-speed, high-precision digital-to-analog mixed signal integrated circuit IP
and Xinwei were founded in 2004, focusing on the research, development, promotion and authorization of high-speed, high-precision, digital-to-analog mixed signal integrated circuit IP cores. The company's current business mainly includes customized IP authorization, SoC design services and chip testing services. The IP combination includes high-speed interfaces, high-speed I/O, ADC and other IPs. Based on its own IP, it provides customers with SoC design services, and also provides IC packaging and testing solutions. Fang'an has served more than 100 domestic and foreign customers, and has applied for more than 400 patents, including 85 US patents. The company's core technologies are high-speed serial interface technology, audio codec technology and high-speed AD-DA conversion technology. High-speed serial interface technology provides speeds up to 12.5Gbps, covering technologies such as USB3.0, SATA, PCIe and Rapid IO. Audio codec provides 16-bit to 24-bit precision audio conversion, high-speed AD provides bit width of 10bit/12bit, sampling The rate can reach 200MHz.The company cooperates with major foundries in 22nm/28nm/40nm/55nm/65nm/90nm/0.13μm/0.18μm and other processes to provide IP products that have been mass-produced or silicon-verified. At the same time, IP can be customized according to requirements. product. More than 80% of
and Xinwei are R&D personnel. The company currently has more than 200 employees and 166 R&D personnel, accounting for more than 80%. Among them, 68 are skilled engineers with more than 10 years of development experience and have participated in hundreds of IP customization/SoC design projects. In terms of personnel distribution, analog circuits, IP digital circuits and SoC digital circuits account for a high proportion of personnel.
Huaxiaxin: multiprocessor IP provider
Huaxiaxin has completely independent intellectual property rights CPU, DSP, GPU and AI processor IP, based on an innovative unified instruction set architecture, microarchitecture and toolchain, aimed at the Internet of Things and edge computing And cloud computing applications, providing different series of customized chip products such as high performance and high energy efficiency. The current IP combination of Huaxiaxin mainly includes CPU, AI accelerator and ISP IP, a GPU IP, a 32-bit low-power CPU and a low-power audio DSP IP under development. In addition to IP authorization, Huaxiaxin also provides a SoC platform, currently two products: GP 3600 and GP8300. The artificial intelligence chip solution based on GP3600 can cover multiple fields such as intelligent driving, intelligent security, smart home, robots, industrial Internet of Things, etc. Essence In terms of FPGA boards, Huaxiaxin provides programmable AI acceleration cards, codec acceleration cards and intelligent network cards.
Huaxiaxin GPTX1 CPU IP is one of the company's representative products. GPTX1 CPU is an embedded CPU core of Huaxiaxin's independent architecture. GPTX1 CPU is the first generation of Huaxiaxin's unified processor platform (Unity Platform). Relying on Unity instructions The microarchitecture and pipelines have been deeply optimized for advanced semiconductor processes, which can achieve higher main frequency and higher energy efficiency under the same process, and is widely used in the fields of network, communication, digital TV, storage, etc.
core Qiyuan: USB IP and DPU product provider
core Qiyuan was established in 2015. The products and solutions focus on 5G, cloud data center, cloud computing and other network communication related fields. The current main products can be divided into four categories, respectively It is a DPU, TCAM chip, MimicPro prototype verification system and USB IP. Among them, USB IP includes ASIC-based solutions and FPGA-based solutions, providing USB 3.2 and USB 2.0 controller IP, supporting 20 Gbps Super Speed+ (USB 3.2 Gen 2x2), and 10 Gbps SuperSpeed+ (USB 3.2 Gen 2x1) , SuperSpeed at 5 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 1x1), High Speed, Full and Low Speed (USB 2.0). Xinqiyuan currently has more than 60 domestic and foreign patents and software copyrights. After its establishment in
Xinqiyuan in 2015, it first owned the TCAM business by acquiring the Marvell TCAM production line, and at the beginning of 2018, the TCAM product obtained the H3 certification. In 2017, the company laid out USB IP products and obtained official USB-IF certification and obtained SONY/HRPC orders in 2018. At the same time, in terms of communications, the company began to lay out smart network cards in 2020 and launched Agilio DPU products, which won China Mobile's at the end of the year. Purchase orders further support the company's R&D strength.
Nanon Micro: Focus on digital-analog hybrid high-speed Serdes IP
Nanon Micro was founded in 2014, focusing on the research and development and sales of digital-analog hybrid high-speed SERDES IP cores, with PCIE, USB3.1/USB3.0/USB2.0, JESD204B : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : , GVI/LVDS/MIPI PHY IP and 12.5G/16G high-speed SERDES IP core and other core technologies, the product process has reached 8nm nodes. The Naneng Technology R&D team has completed more than 100 IP authorization and service cases and has obtained nearly 30 circuit design patents. In terms of customers, Nanengwei maintains a long-term and good cooperative relationship with mainstream foundries at home and abroad. At present, at the 0.18um to 8nm process node, it has completed the design and development of more than ten types of integrated circuit IP cores and chip verification for a large number of domestic and foreign customers.
(This article is for reference only, does not mean any investment advice from our investment. If you need to use the relevant information, see the original report.)
Selected Report Source: [Future Think Tank]. Future Think Tank - Official Website
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