Industry Standards Promulgate or Get Rid of "Ocean Chips"

The application of the chip in security products can be said to be a wide range, and it is also a core component. Therefore, the chip technology is rapidly developing along with the fieryness of the security industry, and is a new profit focus point. However, due to various reasons, China's security chips still rely mainly on imports. The demand for localization of chips is urgent. However, with the promulgation of China’s audio and video codec technology standard SVAC, it is believed that China’s “core” status will be effectively enhanced. The Chinese core market will usher in a brand new future.

For many years, the chip has been restricting the development of China's electronics industry. To overcome this bottleneck, many generations have made unremitting efforts to get rid of the constraints of the "chips of the ocean." After more than 30 years of hard work, the Chinese people finally saw the dawn of the national chip industry. According to statistics, there are as many as 1,188 chip companies registered in the "Made in China Manufacturing Network." The growth rate of Chinese chip companies is also alarming. Once in a day, four new chip companies were registered. It can be said that China has launched a "chip business boom." According to statistics, there are nearly 1,000 "chip design" companies that specially design chips and employ about 20 to 50 people.

At present, China's IC industry has developed rapidly. During the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” period, China’s integrated circuit production increased from 26.11 billion to 65.3 billion, with an average annual growth rate of 20.1%. Sales revenue increased from 70.21 billion yuan to 144.02 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 15.4%. Among them, the chip manufacturing industry grew from 23.29 billion yuan to 44.71 billion yuan, an average annual growth rate of 14%. Ms. Wang Qinsheng, director of IC Design Branch of China Semiconductor Industry Association, pointed out that from the perspective of the design industry, it is divided into three industrial bases in the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and the Beijing-Tianjin region, and each has its own strengths. Among them, the Yangtze River Delta region is the region with the most abundant and complete production chain, and has been developing rapidly in the past two years. The Pearl River Delta region is the frontier of applications and markets, and it is also an area where Chinese industries are in line with international standards. The advantages of the Beijing-Tianjin region are: Many scientific research talents and strong design capabilities. At present, Pudong has become the main force of the chip industry in mainland China. The leap-forward development of Pudong's chip industry has increased the level of manufacturing of Chinese chips and enabled domestic related industries to initially have the ability to compete with other companies in the world.

Security chip foreign brands dominate the development prospects of China's chip industry, the State Council announced at the end of last year, "accelerating the development and development of strategic emerging industries decision" clearly defined the chip industry as a core basic industry. This year marks the beginning of the implementation of the national "Twelfth Five-Year Plan". How to insist on the application of the whole machine as the traction, and take the market as the guide, focuses on promoting technological innovation, mastering core technologies, developing superior products, forming innovative features, and adjusting product structure, Cultivating and forming enterprises with international competitiveness and realizing the rapid development of industrial groups have become the direction of the future development of the chip industry.

At present, the security chip industry located in the upper reaches of the security industry chain is basically controlled by foreign companies; the hardware equipment manufacturers in the middle reaches of the industry chain already have certain R&D technical strength, and they have also occupied a relatively high market share in some areas; The downstream system integration industry is still at the initial stage of development and the market is relatively decentralized. Chips and key devices used in the security field are basically imported from abroad, which has become a bottleneck restricting the further development of the industry. Due to the lack of core technology, many companies only earn processing or assembly fees for their products, earning only one-fifth to one-tenth of profits from upstream technology companies.

After years of development, China's security companies have greatly improved their product quality and technological content, and they have a clear competitive advantage in the domestic and international low-end product markets. The strong market demand also provides favorable conditions for the development of security chips. Security chips are likely to become another new area of ​​concern for IC design companies. A large number of international semiconductor companies such as TI, NXP, ADI, Techwell, and Nextchip have set their sights on China's security market. Tailoring some chips that meet China's security market has played a positive role in promoting the vigorous development of China's security market.

In 1999, NXP (formerly Philips) PNX1300 chip was promoted and applied in China's security market and became the first chip dedicated to the security industry. In 2003, TI launched the universal digital media processor TMS320DM642, which unveiled its formal entry into the digital video surveillance field in China. Subsequently, TI successively introduced several chips for video compression codec such as the DM644x, DM3xx, DM646x, and DM648. This laid the TI's "dominant" status in security video surveillance.

China's "security core" emerged from a technical point of view, security application systems have been clearly divided into front-end, management platform, communications, exchange, storage management, etc., also produced a lot of business applications combined with the management platform. Prof. Chen Long, a researcher at the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that at present, engineering companies, equipment manufacturers, integrators, and engineering companies are at a game stage. It is unclear who will play a leading role in the industry in the future, but it is networked, intelligent, IT, and security. Integration and application will be the main direction for the future development of the security industry. This integration will not only broaden the development of the industry, but will also change and improve the various products in the industry chain and promote the industry to achieve better development. With the continuous improvement of domestic chip technology, pure localization in the security industry chain will also be realized.

Users need to see more clearly, save more, use more convenient, expand the application from islands in the past to horizontal and vertical networking, system capacity rises sharply, and security moves toward digital, network, and intelligent. The security, technology and product and system modalities have changed. Whoever has the ability to independently research and develop and master the advantages of the core technology will be able to become the leader in the transformation. Chip technology, which is the core link in the security industry chain, has also become a market that Chinese chip manufacturers compete for.

At present, domestic production resources are very abundant. At the same time, industrialization, standardization, and the involvement of third parties provide the chip design industry with the possibility of rapid market entry, thus promoting the gradual upgrading of localization and industrialization of chips.

SVAC Standard Improves China's "Core" Status For a long time, China's security products lacked the "Chinese core" and were constrained by foreign chip makers. As the industry's first audio and video codec technology standard with independent property rights, the impact of SVAC is far-reaching. The national security chip industry, which has always been in a weak position, has introduced new vitality, and it has also maintained a good impetus for the development of national brands. As one of the units involved in the formulation of the SAVC standard, China Star Microelectronics released a digital multimedia chip supporting national standard SVAC. In addition to its core multi-core heterogeneous low-power multimedia processor architecture technology, scene-based high-fidelity images are used in the front-end image processing section. The image acquisition and imaging processing in the processing technology enables to record as much image information as possible in a wide dynamic range scene and obtain a clear image restoration visual effect, accurately reflecting a real-world scene.

With the increasing maturity and continuous development of these digital video systems, a series of corresponding audio and video coding standards for digital video surveillance are rapidly developed and continuously improved. From MPEG-1 to MPEG-4 to H.264, China has not had its own security video surveillance digital audio and video codec standard. The promulgation of the SVAC standard has solved the practical problems faced by surveillance video and audio coding, and it is a video/audio codec standard that meets the needs of China's security monitoring applications and has China's independent intellectual property rights. The development of the SVAC standard is conducive to achieving a breakthrough in international security standards in the field of security.

The SVAC standard is the basic technology for digital, high-definition, and intelligent security. The core of the SVAC standard is that it not only addresses the actual needs of the surveillance and solves the practical problems faced by the monitoring of audio and video coding; it also can be faithful to the audio and video coding of the scene. Under the premise of guaranteeing the quality of audio and video, SVAC standard can provide high coding efficiency. Under the premise of equal performance, the specific algorithm will preferentially adopt the scheme with domestic independent intellectual property rights and have a flexible and scalable architecture.

Chen Chaowu, deputy director of the Ministry of Public Security, stated that SVAC, as the basic standard for video surveillance systems, will provide strong technical support for the construction of urban public security comprehensive prevention and control system. On the one hand, it can solve audio and video encoding and decoding in current video surveillance systems. The inconsistency of the standard leads to the system's difficulty in interconnecting and interoperability. On the other hand, it can propose appropriate solutions for security and special applications, and solve the problem that the current video surveillance field can only adopt the standard of radio and television and cannot meet the special needs of security.

The rapid development of the digital video surveillance market has brought new development opportunities to chip suppliers. In terms of digital signal processing, analog power supply, and monitoring platforms, major chip suppliers have stepped up research and development and have introduced new products to seize market opportunities. According to statistics, the cost of digital network HD cameras with a resolution of more than 720p a few years ago was 7,000 yuan per unit. With the maturing of compression technologies such as Hass, TI, and ADI, the cost of chips has been declining. The cost of HD network cameras began to fall dramatically. From the point of view of clarity, 1080p has already entered the practical stage.

With the continuous introduction of new technologies, new products and new services in the security industry, its application and popularization speed has accelerated, resulting in a large number of new demands and greatly expanding the development space of the security chip industry. The drop in the use of thresholds will make video surveillance equipment not only confined to such sectors as banks, transportation, and safe cities, but will also drive the rapid development of the civilian market, thus making the security surveillance industry bigger and bigger, and the market prospects will be considerable. .