Achievements in complementing the weaknesses of the semiconductor industry chain: technological breakthroughs and the merger of leading enterprises
Time:2023-03-16
Views:1116
Source: Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily Author: Guo Hui
Semiconductor chips play a crucial role in the development of industrial economy. The completeness, security and stability of the semiconductor industry chain and supply chain is an important basis for building a new development pattern.
At the National Two Sessions in 2023, there were many constructive policy directions and practical measures to complement the shortcomings of the semiconductor industry and stabilize the domestic supply chain.
The government‘s work in 2023 will focus on measures to expand domestic demand, encourage and attract more private capital to participate in the construction of national major projects and complementary projects, and stimulate the vitality of private investment. In addition, in terms of accelerating the construction of a modern industrial system, it was mentioned that we should focus on the key industrial chain of the manufacturing industry, and focus on high-quality resources to jointly promote key core technologies.
On March 10, the first session of the 14th National People‘s Congress voted to adopt the decision on the institutional reform plan of the State Council, and approved the institutional reform plan of the State Council, including the restructuring of the Ministry of Science and Technology and other departments.
The restructuring of the Ministry of Science and Technology is considered to be an important measure to focus on the national strategic needs, deepen the reform of the science and technology system, build an excellent scientific research system, and complement the weaknesses of the science and technology industry. Zhou Chengxiong, a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Strategic Consulting and Research on Science and Technology, wrote that in the future, the national science and technology management department will pay more attention to strengthening the national strategic science and technology strength, strengthening the key core technology research, breaking the foreign technology blockade and other duties and objectives, while strengthening and focusing on basic research.
Breakthrough in the upper and middle reaches of the semiconductor industry chain
In the semiconductor industry, at present, China has enterprise layout in the material, equipment, software links at the upstream of the industrial chain and in the chip design, manufacturing and packaging and testing links at the midstream. However, in the development level, there are differences in each link, and many areas have significant short-board effects, which need to be strengthened.
For example, China‘s semiconductor industry has developed well in the design and packaging and testing links, among which the packaging and testing link has been the smallest segment of China‘s semiconductor industry chain with the international leading level for many years, while chip design has received high attention in the industrial development in the past few years, with a certain increase in low-end applications.
However, there are certain deficiencies in materials, equipment, software required for design and manufacturing, high-end lithography machine (EUV), high-end photoresist, electronic design automation tool (EDA) and other supporting facilities, leading to the serious dependence of high-end chips, such as CPU, memory, PPGA, etc. on imports.
In recent years, the government and the market have continued to pay attention to the "bottleneck" link, and organized industries, talents, projects, and business entities to tackle the problems. It can be seen that the so-called "short board" is not always the same, including technological breakthroughs, the gradual growth of enterprises and the formation of industry leadership, as well as the gradual development of different sectors of the industry. The capital has also become more sensitive to policy guidance and market trends, and fully shows market vitality.
The reporter of the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily had previously noticed that there were many important investment events in the semiconductor equipment, materials, CPU, GPU and other high-end chip links in 2022, and the single financing amount of multiple projects was about 1 billion yuan or even higher.
Under the guidance of industrial policy and the rotation of the semiconductor cycle, the capital market and institutional bodies began to pay attention to the commercial logic of the project again. With the growth of the middle and lower reaches, they began to focus on the basic links in the upstream of the industry, rather than blindly chasing the wind and concepts as before.
Take the field of equipment and materials as an example, "With the urgent need to break through the technological containment in the upstream core links of semiconductors in China, even though semiconductors enter the downward cycle in 2022, enterprises with relatively strong technology in equipment, core parts, materials and other aspects still receive a lot of policy support and capital support. In the long term, we are still optimistic about the development of domestic semiconductor core equipment, materials and parts enterprises." A semiconductor industry investor told the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily reporter.
The investor predicted that equipment, parts and materials would be very hot after 2023. The logic is that there are still many links in this field that have not been broken through. "Equipment and materials are very critical links, and also the most choked link in our country. The moat of equipment and materials enterprises is very good, and it is not easy to be overtaken after establishing advantages."
At present, China‘s domestic semiconductor equipment links have mature process in the fields of cleaning, heat treatment, film deposition, etching, gelation and development, and have formed a certain degree of industrialization capacity, but there is a large gap in the advanced process; However, photolithography, ion implantation, polishing and other aspects still need to continue to make breakthroughs.
Specifically, cleaning equipment is the field with the highest degree of localization of semiconductor equipment in China, and the localization has reached more than 30%; The localization rate of oxidation diffusion and heat treatment equipment is also close to 30%; The localization degree of chemical-mechanical polishing equipment ranks third, and the localization rate exceeds 20%.
Etching equipment and thin film deposition equipment all show leading positions in the industry, such as Zhongwei Company, North Huachuang, Yitang Semiconductors, Tuojing Technology, Shengmei Semiconductor, etc; The overall localization rate of gluing development equipment and lithography equipment is not high, but in the past, it has achieved zero breakthrough. Xinyuan Microelectronics and Shanghai Microelectronics continue to research and develop high-end products in relevant fields.
In terms of semiconductor materials, the global leader is still dominated by foreign companies. However, the sales of semiconductor materials in China have increased year by year in recent years. According to SEMI data, the market size of semiconductor materials in Chinese Mainland will reach 11.93 billion US dollars in 2021, an increase of 21.90% year on year, accounting for 18.6% of the global scale.
It is noteworthy that the third-generation semiconductor materials have a relatively short development time, and the gap between domestic and foreign semiconductor materials is smaller than that of the first and second generation semiconductor materials. It is hopeful to form an advantage in the global competition in the future, and can avoid materials becoming an industry weakness in the demand growth of downstream new energy, communications and other industries.
High-end chips have obvious "eco-intensive" characteristics, and EDA and IP are short boards
"China‘s chip design companies are generally concentrated in the middle and low end, with serious homogenization competition." A semiconductor investor said that only high-end chip design companies will have relatively large growth value in the long term. Take CPU and GPU for example, "The market space is large, the difficulty is high enough, and the imagination space is enough for everyone, so many investment institutions pay more attention to it."
However, in the past period, some CPU and GPU enterprises have been faced with business problems one after another, which has also made the industry pay more attention to making up for the shortcomings beyond the design capability.
"The essence of CPU and GPU is a ‘capital intensive‘ and ‘ecological intensive‘ industry. It is a ‘marathon‘ industry that needs continuous large-scale investment and continuous consumption war. It is basically impossible for conventional startup companies to do it. No matter how brilliant the founding team‘s history is, it is impossible to ‘kill‘ without the ability to fight for a long time," said the aforementioned semiconductor investor.
EDA tools, integrated circuit IP, and chip design Knowhere capabilities in the "ecosystem" required for the growth of high-end chips have not only overshadowed the development of domestic CPUs and GPUs in the past, but also posed certain risks to the current growing chip design enterprises.
These capabilities are similar to the characteristics of the semiconductor materials and equipment industry, and the technical barriers and product moat effect are strong. When the industry leaders improve the product matrix and deeply bind with the upstream and downstream, it is difficult for off-site enterprises to shake the pattern.
However, with the launch of the National Integrated Circuit Fund, the local government industry guidance fund, the science and technology innovation board, major science and technology projects, and industrial policies in recent years, the support for chip design has been continuously improved, and the complementary board has shown some effect. The EDA tool and chip IP circuit have emerged as leading enterprises and completed IPO fundraising.
Specifically, Huada Jiutian is a pioneer in domestic EDA tools. In terms of product line, it has advantages in the fields of analog circuit design full-process EDA tool system, digital circuit design EDA tool system, flat panel display circuit design full-process EDA tool system, and wafer manufacturing EDA tool system. At present, the market share of the company remains above 50%.
Galen Electronics is a strong competitor in the field of device modeling and circuit simulation. At present, it has formed a core key tool that can support advanced process nodes such as 7nm/5nm/3nm, and various semiconductor process routes such as FinFET and FD-SOI. Its customers cover several important wafer foundries and memory manufacturers around the world. In December 2021, Galen Electronics successfully landed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board and raised more than 1.2 billion yuan.
As a member of the Science and Technology Innovation Board Company, Xinyuan is currently the seventh IP service provider in the world and the first in Chinese Mainland. It has excellent design capability in the global mainstream semiconductor process nodes such as traditional CMOS, advanced FinFET and FD-SOI; In terms of advanced semiconductor process nodes, the company has the successful chip casting experience of 14nm/10nm/7nm/5nm FinFET and 28nm/22nm FD-SOI process node chips.
"Short board" photoresist market is hot again
In recent years, photoresist is often used as a technical case of neck sticking. It is understood that since photoresist is the key material for manufacturing integrated circuits, its short-board effect is most affected by the chip manufacturing process, and the performance of the material directly affects the integration, operation speed and power consumption of integrated circuit chips.
Recently, photoresist has become a hot topic in the secondary market again.
According to the research of Rongda Photosensitive Receiving Agency, the company‘s dry film photoresist, display photoresist, semiconductor photoresist and other products have been sold in batches to the market, and some of them have entered the supply chain system of core customers. Affected by this news, the photoresist plate was driven up, and the cumulative increase of Rongda Photosensitive in nearly three transactions was nearly 50%.
As the core companies of domestic photoresist, Lianrui New Materials, Guangxin Materials and Nanda Optoelectronics have received continuous attention in terms of the latest research and development progress and market introduction.
Lianrui Xincai said that at present, there is research and development and production of semiconductor photoresist monomer, and some products have formed sales, mainly for overseas customers, but the customers cannot disclose. Guangxin Materials said that the company‘s PCB photoresist and TP, TN/STN-LCD photoresist and other photoresists were all sold in batches. Nanda Optoelectronics said on the interactive platform that the company‘s ArF photoresist has built a production line with an annual output of 25 tons. At present, the product is still in the customer verification stage, and the mass production time needs to be determined according to the verification progress and customer order.
Although the above-mentioned enterprises have also made breakthroughs, the overall photoresist products in China are mainly low-end PCB photoresist and LCD photoresist, while the KrF and ArF photoresists in the semiconductor field with high technical difficulties are almost entirely dependent on imports.
In terms of EUV photoresist, due to the lack of advanced process chip factories below 7nm in China, there is neither a large demand for EUV photoresist nor a corresponding supplier. However, from the perspective of industrial structure, the bottleneck of global EUV lithography has shifted from photoresist to photoresist. High-end photoresist has become a global technical challenge, and it is also the goal that Chinese enterprises can not move forward and need to aim to overcome in the future.
|
Disclaimer: This article is transferred from other platforms and does not represent the views and positions of this site. If there is any infringement or objection, please contact us to delete it. thank you! |
Business consulting
13823761625
Mail me