What exactly is a silicon wafer? Wafer refers to the silicon wafer used in the fabrication of silicon semiconductor integrated circuits, which is an indispensable part of the semiconductor industry. China is currently the world's largest importer of semiconductor materials, importing 45.2 billion us dollars in September alone in the first nine months of 2019, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs.
Such a high import volume shows that the development of China's semiconductor industry is still not very ideal, the need for rapid development of related industries. In this way, one can reduce the amount of import and reduce the cost of manufacturing electronic components, and two can greatly improve their position in the industry, mainly export to overseas customers, to earn more costs.
But it is easy to say, but it is still very difficult to really achieve it. Fortunately, some Chinese semiconductor companies have made a lot of achievements in this field in recent years.
What has been achieved at the present stage
According to SEMI's 2019 annual report, the global semiconductor materials market recorded sales of US $52.12 billion in 2019, down 1.1% from the previous year. Sales in major export markets such as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan have all declined, but the Chinese mainland market has increased rather than decreased, and ranked top three in terms of sales volume.
All of this is naturally inseparable from the efforts of China's semiconductor enterprises. As early as the end of 2016, China Yangtze Storage established a national storage base in Wuhan. In the planning at that time, the production capacity of this base was 100,000 pieces/month, which could effectively reduce the demand for semiconductors in China. And at the end of 2017, Changjiang Storage developed China's first 3D NADN flash memory (32 layers), achieving the feat of going from 0 to 1. In 2019, Changjiang Storage also officially announced that it will mass produce a 64-bit 256 Gb TLC 3D NAND flash based on Xtacking architecture, which is the first 64-bit 3D NAND flash in China.
In April of this year, Changjiang storage developed 128 layers of QLC 3D flash, which has the highest storage density per unit area, the highest I/O transmission speed and the highest single NAND flash capacity among the known models in the industry. It has also passed the tests of many SSD master manufacturers. While further filling the gap in China's semiconductor industry, it also shortened the gap with the international top manufacturers and laid a solid foundation for the independent production and development of domestic memory in the future.
In addition, Yangtze Storage has also invested with the United Nations Integrated Circuit Fund, Hubei Science investment Group and Hubei Integrated Circuit Foundation Fund to construct the second phase of the national storage base, with a capacity of 300,000 pieces per month after completion. At present, the monthly production capacity of flash charging in the world is only about 1.3 million pieces, and the Yangtze River storage alone will account for 20% of the global production capacity after completion.
As the parent company of Changjiang Storage, Unigroup is naturally a mainstay of the semiconductor industry in mainland China. Unigroup is not only the world's third largest mobile phone chip designer, but also accounts for 20% of the global SIM card chip market share. Each year, more than 100 million mobile phones in Africa use violet chips. Shipments in India also reached 1.6 billion, accounting for 40 percent of the Indian market.
To further boost its r&d capabilities, Unigroup has spent more than $1 billion over the past decade acquiring several large technology companies. Nowadays, we can basically complete chip development and design, mass production, packaging test, and even server storage by ourselves.
Most of the on-screen fingerprint technology currently used in the market comes from a Chinese company called Huiting Technology, which is the world's largest maker of fingerprint recognition chips for Android phones. In 2017, it took advantage of the trend of android fingerprint popularization and occupied about 31% market share. Subsequently, in 2018, it became the world's first commercial and mass production of optical fingerprint identification chip under the screen. At present, huiting's products have been used in more than 100 models, and most mobile phone manufacturers except Samsung need to buy related products and patents from Huiting.
National policy support
The vigorous development of these enterprises is also inseparable from the relevant policies launched by the Chinese government. In 2014, China officially released the Outline for promoting the Development of the National Integrated Circuit Industry, indicating that China will accelerate the development of semiconductor enterprises in the future and become a semiconductor power in the world.
According to media reports, the state set up the "national Fund" project in September 2014, which has raised 138.1 billion yuan in the first phase and boosted the scale of the local economic fund to over 500 billion yuan. The birth of this program will enable a number of capable companies to enter the world's first tier; Secondly, it can enhance its position in the international market by participating in overseas enterprise acquisition, patent agreement transfer, private placement and investment.
In 2020, the Executive meeting of The State Council clearly stated that we should continue to strengthen the attention to the semiconductor manufacturing industry and put forward the policy of "new infrastructure". The introduction of this policy can bring more demand for China's semiconductor industry, but also can lead these enterprises into a new round of development cycle, so that these enterprises become one of the new driving forces of China's economic growth.
Existing gaps and deficiencies
Although China's semiconductor industry has been in the world's first echelon level, but still not up to the top, even compared with the international top products have no competitiveness. The main reason is the raw materials and equipment manufacturing, in these two aspects are basically monopolized by American and Japanese enterprises, the total market share can reach 90%. For example, in the aspect of lithography machine, China is still quite backward. At present, the most advanced lithography machine in China still stays at the level of 90nm, while the world's top lithography machine manufacturer ASML has started to move towards 5nm and 3nm.
This also leads to in the computer chip aspect, our country can say to take a chip completely can contend with Intel, AMD. Fortunately, in terms of mobile phone chips, China's Haisi Kirin chip is able to compete with the mainstream Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, and even more advanced than Qualcomm and Apple in TERMS of 5G technology. Although there is still a big gap between China and the world's top level, the gap is not as big as we imagined, and the gap will be narrowed bit by bit.
In fact, semiconductor is only a small miniature for China to upgrade its strength. If China wants to become the world's first class in this field, it is completely impossible to import other people's chips and patents. At present, the biggest advantage of China's semiconductor market is that there is enough market demand, and every year science and technology colleges and universities can provide more fresh blood for the industry. Perhaps IN the near future, we can see chips sold IN the European and American markets are "MADE IN CHINA".