1. Huawei Hisilicon is hard to resist sanctions.
This reminds me of the same experience of China chip design giant Huawei Hisilicon in 20 19. Before being sanctioned by the US entity list, Huawei Hisilicon ranked fifth in the world, and its self-developed Kirin series chips have reached the international top level. However, after encountering sanctions, Huawei Hisilicon withdrew from the top ten in the world in 2020. In the first quarter of this year, under the background that the global market scale of smart phone chips increased by 2 1% year-on-year, Huawei Hisilicon's mobile phone chip shipments plummeted by 88% year-on-year.
Why are US sanctions against Huawei Hisilicon so effective?
Remember when we sorted out the pattern of the global semiconductor industry chain in The Rise of Semiconductors, which is a bit long? The United States dominates the whole world in chip design. In addition to Qualcomm, Broadcom and NVIDIA, the upstream of design, IP core and EDA are also monopolized by the United States.
The IP core looks good, because there are not only American companies, but also British companies ARM, accounting for 40% of the global market share, and China Capital owns 5 1% of the shares of ARM China (a Sino-foreign joint venture company operating ARM business in China). However, this is only a superficial phenomenon. In fact, ARM is controlled by American export laws. The reason is that ARM has a core research center of CPU or GPU architecture in Austin, Texas, USA, which contains American technologies and patents. According to American law, technology development rooted in the United States will be included in the territorial proportion, including IP and related core technologies. If the American composition exceeds 25%, it will be governed by American law. Therefore, it is impossible for ARM not to listen to the United States.
EDA is absolutely monopolized by the United States, and American companies Synsys Technology, Deng Kai Electronics and Siemens have a total market share of 77%.
So, do you understand? China has first-class chip design ability, but EDA and ip core are the two core elements that restrict chip design.
The United States is also very aware of this. At the end of August, 20 19, the three major EDA manufacturers in the United States, accounting for 77% of the world, announced that they would suspend their cooperation with Huawei. Horribly, ARM, the IP core boss, also suspended its cooperation with Huawei on the grounds of "observing all the latest regulations of the US government".
You should know that the existing Kirin, Apple A series, Qualcomm, Samsung Orion and MediaTek all adopt the ARM architecture. Although Huawei has a permanent license for arm v8, this is only the old version released on 20 1 1, and the latest version is not available for Huawei.
It is forbidden to design drawings and tools, and the result can be imagined. As long as Kirin chips continue to use ARM architecture in the future, they will basically not escape from the clutches of the United States.
Then let's review the seven semiconductor companies that were sanctioned this time. The first five companies, Xinhua San Semiconductor, Xi 'an Aerospace Hua Xun, Hangzhou Zhongke Wei, Guo Kewei and Suzhou Yunxinwei, are all chip design companies. Are there any similarities?
Second, the import of high-end equipment was blocked.
In addition to chip design, the United States also dominates the semiconductor equipment in the middle reaches and some raw materials in the chip manufacturing process.
Among semiconductor materials, silicon wafer accounts for the highest proportion, accounting for 34%, followed by electronic special gas, accounting for 15%. Silicon wafers are dominated by Japan, and electronic specialty gases are dominated by the four giants of the United States, Germany, France and Japan, accounting for 9 1% of the global market share. Among them, Air Chemical of the United States and Linde Group of Germany are tied for the first place, accounting for 25% of the global market share. The domestic market structure is similar to global distribution, and the domestic market share of the four giants is 88%. Therefore, China also needs to import electronic special gas from the United States to some extent.
Among the semiconductor devices, the applied materials of American companies are in a leading position, ranking among the top in the world in a series of semiconductor devices. In the global market share, PVD accounts for 85% of thin film deposition equipment, ion implanter, CMP equipment and rapid thermal treatment equipment all account for 70%, CVD accounts for 30% of thin film deposition equipment, and dry etching equipment accounts for 17%. Some domestic advanced equipment still relies on imports from the United States.
As I just said, the top five of the seven semiconductor companies sanctioned this time are chip design companies. Now let's look back at the last two companies, Baolia Taihe and Zhao Jia Technology, both of which are electronic component import and trade companies. The former acts as an agent to sell integrated circuit testers and circuit board fault detection equipment, while the latter acts as an agent to promote overseas high-tech test and measurement instruments and high-tech microwave devices.
It can be seen that the United States not only wants to restrict our design links, but also wants to ban the import of high-end semiconductor equipment from China.
Previously, in "The semiconductor is unstoppable! As mentioned in, we are experiencing the third shift of the global semiconductor industry chain. The last round was transferred from Japan to South Korea and Taiwan Province Province of China. With the gradual loss of its labor cost advantage, the semiconductor industry chain has gradually shifted to Chinese mainland, which may be the main reason for the United States to curb the development of semiconductors in China!
Third, the hongmen banquet.
In fact, as early as September 23, the United States has already demonstrated its strength. On the same day, the United States convened a meeting of semiconductor manufacturers from all over the world, which was euphemistically called the "Third Semiconductor Summit". In fact, what awaits you is a banquet. Under the pretext of solving the problem of global chip shortage, the United States requires semiconductor companies to submit the top three customers, order quantity, inventory and other 13 core data to the US Department of Commerce before June 8, otherwise the violators will be dealt with according to the national defense production law.
Under the pressure of the United States, hundreds of semiconductor companies, such as South Korea's Samsung, China's TSMC and Germany's Infineon, handed over confidential data before the deadline.
Semiconductor is a completely global division of labor. The United States is doing this to curb the development of chip companies in other countries. When the United States regains all the information about the current chip market, it can freely intervene in the entire industrial chain, whether through cooperation or suppression. After all, in the era of artificial intelligence, chips are used in almost every field, and their strategic position is self-evident;
The second is to pave the way for the rise of domestic semiconductor industry, which returns to the issue of global industrial chain transfer. The first round moved from the United States to Japan, then to South Korea and Taiwan Province Province of China, and now to Chinese mainland, which means that East Asia is the leading chip foundry. The US Deputy National Security Adviser even directly stated that semiconductor manufacturing is almost completely concentrated in East Asia, which is a terrible "loophole".
In the early 1970s, the United States transferred low-tech OEM and packaging testing to Japan. However, after experiencing the era of home appliances, PCs and mobile phones to the Internet of Things, foundries such as TSMC and Samsung all put forward technical requirements for chip manufacturing, forming technical barriers, just like the advanced technology and advanced packaging we talked about before. The United States does not want to get stuck in OEM and packaging testing, but only wants to copy the labor achievements of other countries and transfer the OEM process back to the United States to build a complete local chip industry chain.
Fourth, the more help you get, the less help you lose.
As far as China is concerned, the United States continues to suppress our chip enterprises, aiming at curbing the development of China's chip industry. On the one hand, it will indeed force us to innovate and stimulate domestic substitution. After all, when China faced a technology blockade, it resisted the pressure and gave up photovoltaic, UHV and nuclear power.
On the other hand, we should also realize that the United States not only infringes on China enterprises, including the industry leaders in Europe, Japan and South Korea, but also offends almost all enterprises in the semiconductor industry chain. The long-arm jurisdiction effect of the United States is bound to cause public outrage around the world.
A total of 65,438+03 European countries, mainly Germany and France, including Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Portugal, announced the establishment of the European Union of Thirteen in February last year to develop the semiconductor industry.
At the beginning of this year, more than 90 companies, led by Huawei Hisilicon and Ziguang Zhanrui, established China's own semiconductor alliance, including many national departments such as Chinese Academy of Sciences. China National Team and China Capital formally joined hands to enter the field of semiconductor chips;
Although Japanese and Korean companies are unable to resist the unequal decision of the United States, they also choose to delay.
Maybe we can open our minds a little wider and wait for the right opportunity in the future. Semiconductor companies around the world will unite to isolate the United States from the industrial chain and fight back against American power. By then, it will be a major reshuffle of the semiconductor industry chain.
How China's chip industry responds to the current challenges and how to find opportunities in the challenges will affect whether China can successfully complete the fourth industrial revolution.