In recent years, the rapid development of mobile Internet has made mobile chips become the engine of the development of integrated circuit industry and the hotspot of international competition and technological innovation. With the strong driving of domestic market and the active use of international open technology achievements, China is in the field of mobile chips. A double breakthrough in core technology and market applications has been initially achieved. On December 4, 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued 4G licenses to the three major operators, marking the entry of China's communications industry into the new era of 4G, which has created a good development environment for the further upgrade of China's mobile chip technology and industry.
First, the 4G era, the global mobile chip technology industry development trend
(1) Mobile chip design technology accelerates multi-dimensional upgrade and strongly supports 4G development needs
In recent years, mobile chips have become an important application field of integrated circuits, and the market potential is unlimited. According to Gartner statistics, the total demand for smartphones and tablets in 2013 surpassed that of personal computers for the first time. In the future, this pattern change will continue to increase, accompanied by The rapid upgrade of mobile chip technology and industry presents a more complex development trend and forms a development trend of multi-technology routes.
From the perspective of communication chips, shipments continued to grow rapidly, reaching 1.1 billion in the first half of 2013. With the acceleration of the commercial process of LTE, the long-term coexistence of multi-networks such as 2G/3G/LTE makes multi-frequency multi-mode become the basic requirement for the development of communication chip technology. Qualcomm is temporarily leading, and it has launched six mobile communication modes in 2012. The die-based chip has outstanding technical advantages in the integration of RF chips and RF front-ends required for multi-mode and multi-frequency. In addition, MTK also recently released MT6595, a single-chip solution for 4G LTE true eight-core smartphone system. It is expected that related terminal products will be launched in the second half of the year.
From the perspective of application processing chips, multi-core multiplexing has become the focus of design. In the first half of 2013, the penetration rate of global multi-core application processing chips reached 2/3. After the quad-core, there are two technical upgrade paths for the application processing chip: one is to continue to increase the degree of multi-core reuse, represented by the eight-core chip introduced by MTK, Samsung, etc., and the other is to achieve the overall upgrade by improving the capability of a single core. It is represented by Apple's 64-bit ARM architecture chip. At present, the above two technical routes have received positive response from design companies. Regardless of the eight-core parallel scheduling or the application processing chip of the 64-bit architecture, synchronous optimization support of the upper operating system, API interface, and application is required, and the difficulty in chip design is greatly improved, which poses a higher challenge to enterprise R&D.
In addition, mobile chips are accelerating penetration into more areas such as wearables and smart TVs. Currently available wearable devices are mostly based on mature mobile chip products, including Google glasses, Samsung watches and so on. The huge market potential of wearables in the future is attracting mobile chip design companies to launch lower-power, higher-integration chip products for wearable devices, such as Intel's ultra-small ultra-low-power Quark processor, which supports more commercial products. The release of the wearable terminal. In the field of smart TV, Mstar has been able to realize all the functions of smart TV through a SoC chip. Domestic TCL and other enterprises keep up with the opportunities of smart TV and try hard. In addition, the integration of mobile chips and open source hardware is more likely to be innovated in the Internet of Things.
(II) Accelerated upgrade of mobile chip manufacturing process, helping mobile computing performance and power consumption advancement
28nm has become the mainstream process node. TSMC is dominated by absolute advantages. Its global market share in 2012 is close to 100%. The key indicators such as yield and performance are outstanding. Samsung and Global Foundries also achieved a breakthrough of 28nm in 2013. The former provides OEM for the A7 chip used by iphone5, except for its own use; the latter is said to have won some orders from Qualcomm. However, compared with TSMC, the gap is still obvious.
In the subsequent upgrade of the manufacturing process, according to the subsequent OEM agreement signed by TSMC and Apple, the most advanced process in 2014 will enter 20nm, and enter 16/14nm in 2015. The rapid upgrade is still unabated; Intel is currently entering 22nm. And plans to launch 14nm in 2014. Mobile chips also promote manufacturing companies to focus on "performance improvement" to "performance and power balance": TSMC's current four 28nm production lines, three mainly used to produce mobile chips, and Samsung Electronics also has 28nm dedicated to mobile chips Production line, performance and power balance are the main features.
Second, China's mobile chip industry foundation and challenges
With the support of the new generation of broadband wireless communication industry and integrated circuit industry, the country has made major breakthroughs from “coreless†to “coreâ€, and a number of design companies that have begun to compete internationally have emerged. The technology gap between top companies is shrinking. In 2013, with the official release of the 4G license, it provided a good development environment for the domestic mobile chip to achieve innovation and upgrade from “core†to “strong coreâ€.
In terms of communication chips, China's mobile phone baseband chip shipments in the first three quarters of 2011, 2012 and 2013 were 3.93, 4.62, and 437 million, respectively; the localization rate doubled within three years, accounting for more than 23%. In terms of LTE chips, China has basically kept up with the international level. At present, HiSilicon, Spreadtrum, Lianxin, ZTE Microelectronics, Chuangyi Video, Repost, and National Technology have realized commercial supply of LTE baseband chips; many companies such as HiSilicon and Spreadtrum have already launched TD-LTE and TD. -SCDMA, LTE-FDD, GSM and WCDMA five-mode chip development, and the use of the most advanced 28nm process design, in 2014, a variety of platforms can be commercialized. The development of LTE-Advanced multimode chips is currently underway and it is expected that test samples will be released in 2014.
In terms of application processing chips, China's smartphone application processing chip shipments in the first three quarters of 2011, 2012 and 2013 were 0.97, 2.58, and 318 million, respectively. The current localization rate reached 25%, and the growth trend was obvious; Spreadtrum and Lianxin, etc. The single chip provided with integrated communication baseband and application processor is an important force for pulling development. Domestic enterprises have gradually deepened their understanding of the infrastructure. Haisi is becoming the first enterprise in China to obtain the authorization for ARM architecture. In addition, Jun is based on the MIPS instruction set designed processor architecture, has been widely used in the field of educational electronic equipment (45% domestic market), and is gradually developing into the fields of smart phones, tablets and wearables.
Under the current industrial structure, China's mobile chips must achieve further breakthroughs and upgrades, and still face enormous challenges in terms of market expansion, technology improvement, and industrial cooperation. The specific performance is as follows:
First, the gap between the strength of most domestic enterprises and the international leading enterprises is large. The products are mainly in the middle and low-end markets, and the profit margin is low. At present, giants such as Qualcomm are entering the low-end market to squeeze the living space. The future will follow the design. The difficulty in upgrading technology and process technology is increasing, and the risk of being widened again is faced.
Second, the development needs of large bandwidth, high speed, high performance and low power consumption need to introduce 28nm or higher technology. At present, there are only a small supply of 28nm chip products in China. In addition, domestic enterprises generally lack the development and accumulation of basic functions such as CPU, GPU, and DSP. The manufacturing enterprises are seriously inadequate in the accumulation of process IP.
Third, the interaction space between mobile chips and local integrated circuit manufacturing is still huge. For example, SMIC's 40nm process can only support about 20% of domestic manufacturers' capacity requirements. 28nm has not yet entered mass production stage and cannot meet the needs of domestic enterprises. Product development needs.
In the face of severe challenges, there are several opportunities for the future upgrade of China's mobile chip technology:
First, on December 4, 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued 4G licenses to the three major operators, marking the entry of China's communications industry into the new era of 4G. The launch of the world's largest LTE market has created a good upgrade for China's mobile chip technology and industry. Development environment.
Second, mobile intelligent terminals will continue to flourish. The status of domestic terminal enterprises in the global industry is rapidly increasing. Huawei, Lenovo and ZTE have entered the top ten in the world. In the mainstream and entry-level markets, Chinese enterprises have become the main force of innovation. The huge domestic market advantage and terminal capacity advantage have created more development opportunities for the subsequent chip companies and terminal enterprises to deepen cooperation and increase the localization rate of chips.
Third, after years of development, domestic mobile chip companies have made certain breakthroughs and accumulations in technology and market, and actively participated in the competition and cooperation in the international market. While improving their global industrial status, they are also rapidly following up global technology development. Trends and formation of good cooperative relations with international giants, such as Qualcomm and SMIC, Spreadtrum and TSMC, will lay a good foundation for better reference and utilization of international advantageous resources and improvement of their competitive strength in the future.
Third, some suggestions for the follow-up development
Based on the above analysis, it is recommended to seize the significant development opportunities brought by 4G, make full use of market advantages, strengthen the technology and industrial layout of mobile chips, promote collaborative innovation in all aspects of the industry chain, and realize the further upgrade of China's mobile chip technology and industry. .
(1) Give full play to the advantages of the local market and promote the rapid expansion of the scale of the mobile chip industry. Give full play to the industrial pull effect of mobile Internet and smart terminals, encourage operators to collect and use domestic chips in the development of terminal enterprises, and accelerate the localization of mobile chips in the domestic demand market. Advance the use of mobile chips in emerging areas such as wearable smart terminals, smart TVs, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing servers.
(2) Breaking through key technologies and consolidating core technology foundations such as multi-mode multi-frequency, high-performance, high-tech chip design and manufacturing. Continue to strengthen the development of LTE and LTE-Advanced multi-mode multi-frequency chips, multi-core parallel architecture and 64-bit architecture chips, integrated single-chip. Increase support for the development of state-of-the-art process commercial chips. Promote in-depth R&D and customization of ARM infrastructure, increase independent research and development of key IP cores such as DSP, GPU, USB, HDMI interface, and encourage the exploration of industrial ecology based on MIPS architecture.
(3) Strengthening industry linkages and achieving synergistic progress in key aspects such as mobile chip design and manufacturing. Joint chip design and manufacturing companies jointly develop the basic technology of 20nm and higher process technology; promote the realization of special processes such as simulation and MEMS. Encourage domestic enterprises to realize intellectual property rights in a variety of ways, encourage design and manufacturing companies to deepen cooperation to achieve research and development of featured process products, and promote the participation of “chips and complete machinesâ€, “chip design and manufacturingâ€, and “IP core and chip designâ€. Resource coordination, optimization and close cooperation.
(4) Give full play to the state's policy support and guidance, and further strengthen support and coordination of core technology research and development, key equipment procurement, and core patent authorization. Optimize the industrial environment, explore and adjust existing investment/talent/R&D mechanisms for mobile chip and integrated circuit development needs; encourage industry funds, venture capital, etc. to increase support for SMEs, actively explore new technologies/new directions, and promote domestic enterprises M&A and cooperation; expand the listed financing channels of chip manufacturing companies and attract more capital.
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