"Strong Core" In Dawan District

Editor's note

As a strong cyclical industry, semiconductor enterprises encountered a serious "chip shortage" in the first half of this year. The industry boom cycle is also an opportunity period for the rapid growth of industries and companies. Both the industry and the government of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area are seizing the opportunity, making in-depth layout and accelerating the cultivation of "core" strength. How can the government increase the support for semiconductor industry in policy and capital level? With 314 listed semiconductor companies and the first patent ownership in China, how can Dawan District continue to strengthen its semiconductor industry chain? How to make up for the shortcomings? How about the enterprise ecology in the region“ "High growth enterprise theory · 2021 large scale special report on gazelle enterprises in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay Area", focusing again on semiconductor and integrated circuit industry.

In recent two years, under the global science and technology game, especially the Sino US science and technology game, the semiconductor and integrated circuit industry is at the forefront of the storm. As an important symbol of China's comprehensive scientific and technological strength, the semiconductor industry is further valued in China. Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area is accelerating the cultivation of "core" strength, continuously strengthening the regional semiconductor industry chain, and making up for the shortcomings, and increasing investment in basic research fields.

According to the public data, the main business income of integrated circuit industry in Guangdong Province will exceed 120 billion yuan in 2019. According to the plan of Guangdong Provincial Development and Reform Commission, the annual main business income of integrated circuit industry will exceed 400 billion yuan by 2025.

Chip design is a strong point of Guangdong Province. In addition to Huawei, ZTE, BYD and other giants, Obi Zhongguang, Hangshun chip and Gaoyun semiconductor are growing; At the same time, at the lower level of chip architecture, risc-v and others aim at the opportunity of risc-v architecture, and risc-v Camp wants to explore open-source path beyond arm and x86; At the manufacturing end, Guangdong core semiconductor is a new representative wafer manufacturing enterprise, and a number of related new companies are emerging in the field of packaging and testing and equipment in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao.

Guangdong provincial market supervision and Administration Bureau (Intellectual Property Office) released the latest patent navigation analysis report of Guangdong semiconductor and integrated circuit industry in April this year. The report points out that at present, from the data of innovative enterprises in Guangdong Province, the semiconductor and integrated circuit industry in Guangdong Province has a large scale and a rapid growth rate, and the number of enterprises with invention patents ranks first in China, It is mainly distributed in the bay area of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. According to the report, by the end of 2020, there were 9397 national high-tech enterprises in the semiconductor and integrated circuit industry of Guangdong Province, 314 listed companies, 1405 start-up enterprises with successful financing and patent application. The number of the above three types of enterprises ranked first in China.

A number of investors in the semiconductor industry told the 21st century economic report that since 2021, Guangdong Province has been strengthening its support for the semiconductor industry in terms of policies and funds. At the same time, it is very important for semiconductor enterprises to plan and develop in close combination with market demand, rather than chasing after tuyeres.

Semiconductor start-up companies gather in Dawan District

In 2013, Huang Yuanhao, a big player in the field of optics, decided to return to China to start his own business. He chose Shenzhen, the city of innovation, to set up Obi Zhongguang technology company. Subsequently, Obi Zhongguang became the first company in China to carry out systematic research and development of 3D visual perception technology. At present, it has deployed structured light, itof, binocular, dtof, lidar and other technologies, covering multiple application scenarios such as 3D face brush payment, mobile phone 3D camera, service-oriented robot, etc.

"From 2013 to 2016 is the initial stage, all of which are in research and development. Only in 2015 can we have chips. In 2016, we have revenue and profits in the first year," Huang Yuanhao, the founder, chairman and CEO of OBI Zhongguang, recalled to the 21st century economic reporter, "one of the key nodes is to start making chips in early 2014. In retrospect, At the time, it was a little crazy. "

As we all know, entering the chip field means a large amount of capital investment and technical threshold, which is a challenging choice for the newly established enterprises.

Huang Yuanhao said: "in 2013, Obi Zhongguang raised 10 million yuan. It seems that 10 million companies have just made chips. But at that time, we did 3D sensing and algorithms, and then naturally we had to achieve the chip layer. Otherwise, the whole system could not be made and the power consumption would not be reduced, which would affect the experience. So the chip was naturally made in early 2014, which is a major decision point. "

Now looking back, Obi Zhongguang at that time undoubtedly made the right choice. In 2015, the company's first chip was released, and combined with the research of 3D sensing, it laid a technical foundation for the upcoming 3D vision application. With Apple's introduction of 3D structured light for face recognition in 2017, Obi Zhongguang began to face more and more inquiries from mobile phone manufacturers, because of its ability to design 3D depth camera computing chip and realize the mass production of 3D structured light module.

After entering the mobile phone scene, Obi Zhongguang began to design photosensitive chips at the end of 2018, because the products on the market do not meet the various characteristics of its 3D sensing, and the customization cost is high. Finally, all of these have formed the core competitiveness of OBI Zhongguang, that is, the chip design, depth algorithm and optical design in the field of vision technology can be completed by itself, which not only forms the integration ability, but also can make differentiation in 3D sensing. Huang Yuanhao told reporters that Obi Zhongguang is currently planning aiot digital computing power chips, which combine AI computing power with 3D sensing, and launch computational power chips for subdivision fields.

Obi Zhongguang is sensitive in visual technology, focusing on technical research, and seizing the window period of face recognition market demand. Recently, Obi Zhongguang announced its prospectus and plans to be listed on the science and technology innovation board.

Shenzhen Hangshun chip technology research and Development Co., Ltd., which was established in the same period as Obi Zhongguang, chose the chip track from the beginning. At present, it focuses on the MCU field, and its 32-bit MCU / SOC products have been applied in many scenes such as home appliances, industry, smart city, etc.

In the MCU market, Hangshun chip is a latecomer. Foreign companies such as Wilhelm semiconductor, Renesas electronics and other old semiconductor companies, and there are also mature large enterprises such as Zhaoyi innovation in China. In the past two years, the sales volume of Hangshun chip has risen rapidly and grown rapidly. Liu Jiping, founder of Hangshun chip, told the 21st century economic report: "we broke through the sales of 10 million yuan in the second year of entering MCU, and exceeded 100 million yuan in the third year. This year's revenue should be between 300 million yuan and 800 million yuan."

For high growth, Liu Jiping talked about many factors. First, he chose the right 32-bit MCU track. "The industry used to do 8-bit MCU, then turned to 16 bit MCU, but 16 bit has not been able to push up. However, we see that the market volume of 32-bit MCU / SOC will be very large, such as fingerprint lock, camera, smart city home, etc., which will bring huge demand."

Secondly, Hangshun chip acquired the core research and development team of high-end 32-bit MCU, and accumulated technical ability; At the same time, the company's sales capacity is strong, and after landing in Shenzhen, it is closer to the market and closely fits the market demand.

From the industry as a whole, on the one hand, under the change of Global trade environment, the market's acceptance of domestic chip products has become higher. In the case of a shortage of MCU, Hang Shun chip quickly stuck into the market. On the other hand, the epidemic has increased the demand for new chips, including ventilator, oximeter and forehead temperature gun, as well as medical and health products such as body fat meter. According to reports, the current customers of Hangshun chip include huiding, Konka, Skyworth, TCL, Hisense, State Grid and other enterprises.

In spite of the previous shortage of funds, from 2020, Hangshun chip ushered in the favor of capital, with a total of hundreds of millions of yuan of financing. On June 24, 2021, Hangshun chip announced that it had won the c-round investment of Shunwei capital. Previously, Hangshun chip obtained the B + round strategic investment of huiding technology, the b-round strategic investment of national science and technology investment of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the additive investment of Shenzhen Industrial Fund, and the pre round a strategic investment of AVIC group.

This is a microcosm of semiconductor enterprises taking root in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area. There are policy support, market demand attraction, and enterprise's consideration of the comprehensive business environment, especially the rise of a large number of chip design enterprises in the bay area.

Growing new entrepreneurial forces

In recent years, a new group of semiconductor start-ups are growing, and research and development in the lower level technology, among which risc-v architecture has attracted much attention. Especially in recent years, facing the trend of heterogeneous computing, some industry experts predict that x86, arm and risc-v will have a chance to win the third place in the future.

Up to now, CPU mainly has two instruction sets: complex instruction set (CISC) architecture x86, and reduced instruction set (RISC) architecture camp includes arm, MIPs and risc-v. Risc-v is the fifth generation instruction set architecture based on the principle of "reduced instruction set", and it is open-source to the outside world. Due to the attributes of open-source, neutral and concise, and not affected by the U.S. policy, risc-v is regarded as an opportunity to overtake on the curve by many countries.

In August 2018, Dr. Tan Zhangxi came to Shenzhen and founded Ruisi core technology (Shenzhen) Technology Co., Ltd. After the science and technology sanctions incident, the industry believed that risc-v would usher in development opportunities in China. While riscore mainly develops high-end processors and DSP / AI chips based on risc-v instruction set, which can be applied in wearable devices, industrial vision, automobile and other scenes.

Tan Zhangxi is one of the main members of the risc-v original project team of the University of California, Berkeley. His doctoral supervisor, Professor David Patterson, was the winner of the Turing prize in 2017, and proposed the streamlined instruction set as early as 1979. In recent years, the reduced instruction set has been widely used in the Internet of things and other fields, including risc-v.

Tan Zhangxi, founder and CEO of riscore, told the 21st century economic report: "in comparison, I think the domestic demand for risc-v will be higher. In foreign countries, most of them are made by large factories themselves, and then, or replace some products outside the core. The enthusiasm in China is higher, because arm is not a problem in foreign countries, but for China, arm has systematic risks in the long run, so Chinese enterprises will be more radical and will have greater development in the future. "

"The advantage of risc-v is that the development of risc-v is mainly based on open source. With the basic instruction set of risc-v unchanged, anyone (or manufacturer) can further construct an instruction set that meets the needs of the market on the basic instruction set. Due to the open source relationship, communities can communicate with each other to make more contributions to the risc-v community, thus contributing to the rapid development of technology. The most important key to the development of commercialization is whether the terminal application has the intention to use the mainstream products of risc-v architecture, such as smart meters, smart wear or intelligent motor control. " Yao Jiayang, a consulting analyst with trendforce, told the 21st century economic reporter.

At present, risc-v is still in the early stage of development, the commercialization and ecological construction of enterprises are still in progress, and innovative enterprises at home and abroad continue to emerge. In the face of competition, Tan Zhangxi told reporters: "the first thing is to see whether the product is easy to use, and the second is whether the corresponding technology can provide sufficient value to customers. Most of the time, competitors are original solutions, not risc-v peers. In my opinion, there is a big development in this field. If risc-v really challenges arm and Intel x86, it must be challenged in the core scenarios (such as processors), not in the peripheral areas. "

At the same time, Tan Zhangxi also said that the difficulty of current development is that there are not enough high-performance processors and high-end products, which leads to the bottleneck in the development of software ecology, and it may be improved in the next two or three years. "I think we should see some risc-v solutions in the core field in the next five years. Before the success of arm in that year, it also made a low-end market for more than 10 years, Finally, we found that it can be used in the mainstream computing platform of mobile phones. For risc-v, there will be a similar platform, and then it will become the main force. During this period, three to five years are needed. "

With the advent of the Internet of things era, risc-v, as an emerging architecture, has become a new opportunity point for semiconductor industry with its simplified size and neutral characteristics. Dawan district is also attracting the aggregation of upstream and downstream industrial chains with a more open attitude.

"Strong core" in progress

In 2021, enterprises are also facing challenges and opportunities. For the start-up companies in Dawan District, the challenges come from the impact of epidemic situation, commercialization and talent supply.

Facing the challenge of commercialization, Huang Yuanhao said: "first, we need to find the industries with the strongest demand and purchasing power, and focus on serving them well."; The second is technology investment. In fact, the threshold of 3D vision technology is very high. At present, it is in a relatively early stage. The development of 3D vision technology, including the depth engine chip, photosensitive chip and computing power chip, still has a long way to go. While technology still needs constant investment, the industry needs to consider revenue and face the problem of balance. "

In Huang Yuanhao's view, Obi Zhongguang is now in the process of technology expansion, deepening and industry grinding and iteration. With the decrease of cost and the increase of industry market after iteration, it will gradually enter the stage of take-off.

For start-ups, how to make a good balance between R & D and profitability is indeed a test, especially for the semiconductor industry, which itself is a long-term investment heavy industry, and needs the support of policies, funds, talents and other levels. In terms of talents, many entrepreneurs believe that Dawan district needs to establish a good local talent training mechanism or improve the level of local practitioners, which requires long-term education and training, so that the supply of talents can be more solid and stable.

In recent years, Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area is also providing more assistance and opportunities for enterprises. On the one hand, the big bay area has a broad market demand, on the other hand, the policy dividend is continuous. Since 2020, Guangdong Province has issued a number of new policies on semiconductor industry. The goal is to form a number of design enterprises with sales revenue of more than 1 billion yuan and more than 3 design enterprises with sales revenue of more than 10 billion yuan by 2025. EDA software will be localized, the design capacity of high-end general-purpose chips will be significantly improved, and the chip design level will enter the international advanced ranks, Build Dawan District into a semiconductor and integrated circuit industrial cluster with international influence, and promote the high-quality development of manufacturing industry.

From the overall situation of Guangdong Province, "Guangdong Province semiconductor and integrated circuit industry patent navigation analysis report" points out that Guangdong Province semiconductor and integrated circuit industry chain has the characteristics of full coverage, and there are more enterprises and talents in the key links of the industrial chain, and a large number of patents are distributed. Overall, the distribution of the industrial chain is more reasonable.

According to the number of invention patent applications, the number of enterprises, the number of invention engineers and their ranking in China, the industries with advantages are integrated circuit design, packaging and testing, and optoelectronic devices; Among them, 22869 invention patent applications, 42721 invention engineers and 3875 innovative enterprises in the integrated circuit design industry all rank first in China and have absolute advantages; The number of invention patent applications in the sealing and testing industry was 11227 (ranked second), 33041 invention Engineers (ranked first), and 2729 innovative enterprises (ranked second); Among these industries, single manufacturing process, integrated manufacturing process, materials, discrete devices and sensors are slightly insufficient, especially the manufacturing link of integrated circuit.

At present, Obi Zhongguang, Hangshun chip, Ruisi core technology and other enterprises are making breakthroughs in chip design and chip architecture. Guangdong chip semiconductor is driving the development of semiconductor manufacturing in Dawan district. Packaging and testing and equipment manufacturers are also emerging in succession. Dawan district is taking advantage of the momentum on the road of strong core.