At the 2019 world manufacturing conference held in Hefei, Anhui Province from September 20 to 23, Changxin storage announced that the DRAM production line was put into operation. This marks a major breakthrough in the field of memory chips in China. Hefei will rely on Changxin memory to introduce chip design, packaging test, equipment materials and intelligent terminal projects to build airport integrated circuit supporting industrial park.
Many experts attending the meeting said that the integrated circuit industry is a strategic, basic and leading industry supporting economic and social development and safeguarding national security. With the gradual maturity of 5g, artificial intelligence, Internet of things, big data, cloud computing and other fields, China''s IC industry will usher in a broad space for development. At present, the proportion of "three industries" (packaging and testing, design and manufacturing) in China''s IC industry is approaching a reasonable level, adjusting to the golden ratio of 3:4:3. It is expected that China''s IC market will maintain stable growth in the next three years.
Major breakthroughs
According to reports, at the 2019 world manufacturing conference held in Hefei, Anhui Province on September 20, Changxin memory chip (DRAM) self manufacturing project with a total investment of about 150 billion yuan was announced to be put into production, and its first generation 8GB DDR4 of 10nm level, which is synchronized with the international mainstream DRAM products, appeared for the first time. On September 2, Changjiang storage, a subsidiary of Ziguang group, announced that it had started mass production of China''s first 64 layer 3D NAND flash memory based on xtacking architecture to meet the demand of mainstream market applications such as solid state disk and embedded storage.
DRAM (dynamic random access memory) is a kind of main memory. As a common system memory, DRAM has the characteristics of high capacity, large bandwidth, low power consumption, short delay and low cost. It is widely used in PC, mobile phone, server and other fields. It is the single chip category with the largest proportion of the output value of integrated circuit industry. NAND flash is mainly used for code storage and data storage, which is widely used in consumer electronics, mobile communications, network communications, personal computers, servers and other fields.
The commissioning of Changjiang storage and Changxin storage is of great significance, which is expected to break the monopoly pattern of the storage market by overseas manufacturers. According to DRAM exchange data, Samsung, SK Hynix and Meguiar respectively accounted for 44%, 29% and 22% of the global DRAM market in 2018, and the three companies together accounted for 95% of the global market. Although the global NAND storage market concentration is lower than DRAM market, it is still controlled by leading enterprises. Samsung, Toshiba, Meguiar, western data, SK Hynix and Intel account for 35%, 19%, 13%, 15%, 10% and 7% of the market respectively, and the six companies together account for 99% of the global market.
Chuancai Securities pointed out that in the classification of China''s IC import products in 2018, memory is still the largest import product, accounting for 36%. At present, China''s IC market is still dominated by imports, and the localization rate is low, especially in DRAM, NAND memory, computer and server CPU. With the development of integrated circuit industry, China''s high-end field of integrated circuit will be significantly improved, and there will be a huge market space for import substitution of integrated circuit industry in the future. Guosheng Securities said that the explosive growth of data is the core of the growth of the memory industry, and the source of data growth is the growth of the number of device connections and the number of devices generated. This will drive the data processing capacity corresponding to DRAM demand and the data storage capacity corresponding to NAND flash demand. In the past five years, the growth of device connectivity mainly comes from consumer electronic devices such as smart phones. In the next stage, Internet of things devices and cars will be the core drivers of the number of device connections. According to the forecast of IC insight, the fastest growing segment of the composite market from 2018 to 2023 is still memory chips, with a growth rate of 7.8%, 1 percentage point higher than the overall semiconductor market.
Vast space
Experts said that the biggest market demand in the world is China''s advantage in developing the integrated circuit industry. With 5g, Internet of things, AI, cloud computing and other new technologies enabling the manufacturing industry, China''s memory chip industry will usher in a broad space for development. According to the data disclosed by the General Administration of customs, from 2014 to 2017, China''s annual imports of integrated circuits were US $217.6 billion, US $229.9 billion, US $227.0 billion and US $260.1 billion respectively; in 2018, China''s imports exceeded US $300 billion for the first time, actually us $312.058 billion, up 19.8% year on year.
In recent years, the growth rate of China''s IC market has led the global market. According to the statistics of China Semiconductor Industry Association, in 2017, 2018 and from January to June 2019, the sales volume of China''s IC industry reached 541.13 billion yuan, 653.2 billion yuan and 304.82 billion yuan respectively, with a year-on-year growth of 24.8%, 20.7% and 11.8% respectively. According to the data of the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics Association (WSTS), in 2017, the global semiconductor market scale reached US $412.2 billion, with a growth rate of 21.6%; in the second half of 2018, affected by factors such as the decline of memory prices, the global semiconductor market scale increased by 13.7% year on year to US $468.778 billion. According to data released by SIA, the global semiconductor market in the first half of this year fell by 14.5% year-on-year.
A Senior IC analyst told China Securities News, "China''s semiconductor market will maintain a high growth trend, faster than the global market. This industry (mainly in the field of design) has obviously shifted to the Chinese market. Domestic downstream terminal market demand is good, including smart phones, computers, security and so on. "
Xu Tao, chief analyst of CITIC Securities electronics, said, "semiconductor market demand is mainly concentrated in smart phones, high-performance computing, automobiles, Internet of things and other fields. From the perspective of terminal, driven by 5g new machine release and replacement demand, it is expected that 2020 will be the year of consumer electronics; from the perspective of cloud, the capital expenditure of cloud manufacturers will pick up in the second quarter, and it will be relatively optimistic from the second half of the year to 2020, and 2020 is likely to be the year of data center hardware performance; in addition, the demand of automotive electronics and Internet of things is expected to grow rapidly, and the demand boost will drive half year The conductor industry is back on the growth track. "
Coordinated development
At present, there are some weak links in China''s IC industry to be strengthened. For example, the self-sufficiency rate of core equipment and key materials is low, the process needs to catch up, and some core components can not find ideal alternatives.
Ding Wenwu, President of national integrated circuit industry investment fund Co., Ltd., pointed out at the above forum that China''s integrated circuit industry has developed well in recent years, but there is still a gap with the international advanced level in terms of industrial scale and technical level. We should build an integrated circuit industry chain supply system, each link should be organically combined with users, especially domestic equipment and materials.
Ren Aiguang, deputy director of the electronic information department of the Ministry of industry and information technology, said that the next step of the development of the integrated circuit industry needs to do a good job in "four persistence". First of all, we should adhere to improving the innovation ability of the integrated circuit industry and promoting the high-quality development of the industry. We will continue to enhance the collaborative innovation capability of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and actively build a complete industrial system from basic research, supply technology, equipment and materials to machine application. We will promote the high-quality development of the integrated circuit industry. Secondly, we should continue to stimulate market vitality and promote the development of industrial integration. Focus on the traditional market with large quantity and wide range, grasp the emerging markets such as cloud computing, big data and Internet of things, accelerate the formation of an integrated circuit industry innovation system with enterprise as the main body, market as the guidance and deep integration of industry, University, research and application, further stimulate market vitality and build a new pattern of industrial integration and development. Third, we should persist in improving the construction of the industrial chain and comprehensively enhance the comprehensive competitiveness of the industry. Further promote the optimization and improvement of the overall level of the integrated circuit industry, drive the backbone enterprises of the integrated circuit to become bigger and stronger and the rapid development of small and medium-sized enterprises, promote the development of the integrated circuit industry from cluster to cluster, and comprehensively enhance the international competitiveness of the integrated circuit industry. Finally, we should adhere to optimizing the business environment and build a good industrial development order. Further strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights, and promote the aggregation of industrial factors such as talent market, technology and capital.
Ding Wenwu pointed out that since 2014, the enthusiasm for the development of integrated circuit industry has been very high. But there may be some repeatability, especially low-level homogenization competition. It is suggested that the relevant ministries and commissions should strengthen the management and make overall planning. In terms of IC personnel training, Ding Wenwu said, "there is a shortage of talents, especially high-end talents. Enterprises are digging talents for each other, and the cost is getting higher and higher. The key is to improve the quantity and quality of talents.