Semiconductor Voice At The Two Sessions: Focus On R & D And Talent In Core Infrastructure

Since the Chung Hsing and HUAWEI incident, semiconductors, a highly specialized discipline, have entered the public eye. We began to explore the category of semiconductor industry such as integrated circuits and chips, and further realized the importance of basic technology.

As a strategic highland, semiconductor has many supports at the policy level. In 2014, integrated circuits appeared in government reports. In recent years, the recommendations and voices of the semiconductor industry in the two sessions have also become intensive. In 2020, the development of related fields such as localization, power semiconductor, sensor chip, vehicle regulation chip, and establishment of first level discipline were mentioned in the two sessions.

According to the data released by the General Administration of customs, China's imports of integrated circuits ranked first in all 3 consecutive years in 2019. In the first 4 months of 2020, China imported 160 billion 540 million integrated circuits, an increase of 31.1%, worth 692 billion 110 million yuan and an increase of 14% in imports. Huge data reflect the importance of integrated circuits.

At the same time, integrated circuits and new infrastructure are closely linked and are the underlying support for new infrastructure. Whether it is 5G infrastructure, new energy vehicle charging pile, big data center, or AI, industrial Internet, we can not do without computing power and data processing capability of chips. For example, 5G base station needs baseband chip, FPGA chip and optical communication chip; cloud computing needs CPU, GPU and NPU; charging pile needs power chip, power management chip, control chip and so on.

Therefore, the new infrastructure is built on the basis of chip infrastructure. Strengthening the domestic semiconductor industry is imperative. But how to build it is a huge and complex topic. The representatives of the two sessions provided many suggestions and Countermeasures for solving the problem.

Focus on R & D and talent

John Deng, a member of the Chinese Academy of engineering and founder of the China MICROSTAR group, suggested that, on the one hand, the state should make full efforts to promote the domestic independent substitution work in the field of "necking" such as chips, better play the role of the government, effectively compensate for market failure, further reduce the value added tax on domestic independent products, and strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights. On the other hand, he also suggested that the state should promote more capital investment in the field of semiconductors and serve the national strategic objectives.

This is a proposal from the country's overall policy level, and there are many proposals for chip development and talent strategy. Among them, chips, MEMS sensors, power semiconductors, vehicle gauge chips have received much attention.

    In the proposal to promote the scientific development of China's power semiconductor industry, the Central Committee of the people's progressive government said that with the continuous emergence of new applications in the fields of industry, automobile, wireless communication and consumer electronics and the increasingly urgent demand for energy saving and emission reduction, China's power semiconductors have huge market demand, and easily lead to new industries and new technologies. The best breakthrough for "China core". For this reason, the Central Committee of the people's Republic of China suggested that we should further improve the development policy of the power semiconductor industry, intensify tackling key problems in new materials, and cautiously support the acquisition of foreign power semiconductor enterprises.

In the field of sensor chip, Xiang Xiaobo, chairman of the National People's Congress and chairman of China quadruple Instrument Group Co., Ltd., suggested that we should vigorously develop the core technology and industrialization of China's autonomous semiconductor MEMS sensor chip. At present, MEMS semiconductor sensors restrict the development of industrial equipment safety in China. Therefore, he said, first, it is recommended to strengthen the top-level design, to study the MEMS sensor industry as a separate industry; second, to set up transnational and national R & D projects, and to increase support for MEMS sensor's independent design, process and manufacturing. Third, to provide financial support for industrial development, while supporting domestic enterprises to carry out international cooperation in the field of MEMS sensors.

    Regarding the automobile chip, the Central Committee of the Kuomintang mentioned in the proposal to speed up the development of vehicle regulation chip and promote the development of new energy vehicles and energy storage. The vehicle gauge chip was monopolized by foreign manufacturers. The domestic automobile front end sampling chip is still blank in product development or market application. It is the most obvious short board in the development of new energy vehicle industry in China, and brings many hidden dangers. Problem. To this end, the Central Committee of the Kuomintang put forward four suggestions: concentrate on supporting the technical chip of R & D projects, and incorporate the vehicle gauge chip technology breakthroughs into the key research tasks of the national key R & D plan for the new energy vehicle special plan; guide related enterprises to strengthen application support; enhance the ability of innovation and personnel training; and pay attention to the protection of intellectual property rights.

In addition, the topic of training of integrated circuit talents is getting more and more attention. Zhou Yumei, member of the CPPCC National Committee and deputy director of the Microelectronics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hao Yuejun, member of the CPPCC National Committee and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, called for the acceleration of the establishment of the first level discipline of integrated circuits.

Promoting core infrastructure

"Chip is the core of information industry and the soul of modern industry. It is a strategic, foundational and leading industry that ensures national security and supports economic and social development. Chips are strong, industries are strong, chips are booming. Hu Chengzhong, chairman of the National People's Congress and chairman of the board of directors of Delhi group, said.

    At the same time, the new infrastructure has also put forward a large-scale demand for chips. The white paper on new infrastructure development released by the Sai Di Institute pointed out that in the process of building the new infrastructure, 5G chips, GPU, TPU, NPU and other AI chips will realize the new energy vehicle, the high speed rail switching power conversion rate and the key chip IGBT of frequency conversion control, aiming at intelligent hardware, intelligent household appliances and intelligent metering. IOT chips, such as different application scenarios, have wide market demand. It can be seen that the new infrastructure is also the further infrastructure of the chip.

In fact, in recent years, semiconductor has been continuously heated. From the first phase of the big fund to the two phase of the big fund, the funds invested by the state in the semiconductor industry are very huge. During the two sessions, Chen Min Bo, Deputy Secretary General of the National People's Congress and Deputy Secretary General of the Shanghai municipal government, suggested that the country set up an integrated circuit design industry fund to promote the establishment of the National IC design industry fund in Shanghai by 100 billion yuan.

    Shenzhen, or even the big bay area of Guangdong, Hongkong and Macau, is also speeding up the layout of the semiconductor industry. Li Dongsheng, the NPC deputy and vice chairman of the National Federation of industry and commerce, founder and chairman of TCL, said in an interview with the economic report and other media in twenty-first Century: "TCL Huaxing has invested over 130 billion in Shenzhen. In the field of semiconductor display, the largest semiconductor display in the world has been formed. There are four factories in Guangming District, especially a group of manufacturing enterprises. The other group, like HUAWEI ZTE, has excellent products and technologies in 5G and communications, and their manufacturing plants are located in the surrounding areas of Shenzhen. In the past few years, the Shenzhen municipal government has made great efforts to make some land consolidation, hoping to make more places to build high-tech industries. The direction is right, but this needs a process, and Shenzhen is also trying hard to build the chip industry.

After years of efforts, domestic enterprises have developed rapidly in the field of design and sealing. For example, IC Insights data showed that HUAWEI Hass first entered the top ten semiconductor manufacturers in the first quarter of 2020. However, the development of the domestic semiconductor industry has a long way to go, including manufacturing links and upstream materials and equipment.

At present, domestic substitution and open cooperation are the two most important words mentioned. XinDa's electronic report points out that it is imperative to speed up domestic substitution of equipment and materials. The year 2019 is a replacement year for semiconductor design companies, and 2020 will be a great year for capital expenditure of fab. SMIC, Changjiang storage, Hefei Changxin, Huarun micro and other domestic leading companies will speed up construction capacity.

On the other hand, a number of semiconductor industry insiders told reporters in twenty-first Century that apart from domestic substitution, we must continue to open up cooperation and strengthen the strategy of multiple suppliers instead of taking a single road. For example, Li Dongsheng suggested that in the field of semiconductor display, we can encourage our enterprises to carry out technical cooperation with other countries and regions such as Japan and Europe in a variety of ways to speed up the development and breakthroughs of key technologies of new display in China, and enhance the core competitiveness of Chinese enterprises in the field of new display technology.

Next, how to further accelerate the domestic semiconductor industry to follow the law of industrial development, and how to better carry out top-level design, still need a lot of considerations.

(author: Southern finance and Economics National two sessions report group Ni Yuqing)