With the continuous improvement of the penetration rate of domestic automobile enterprises and the continuous maturity of domestic IC design and manufacturing capabilities, the penetration rate of domestic chips in the field of intelligent electric vehicles will increase rapidly in the future.
Text/Daily Earnings Report Liu Yuchen
Since the beginning of this year, the short-term problems of automotive chips that have erupted around the world have continued to this day. Why do automotive chips bother manufacturers?
An important reason is that the accelerated penetration of electric smart cars has become the core driving force for the rapid growth of the automotive semiconductor industry.
With Tesla's subversive changes, car electrification and intelligence have gradually become the consensus of OEMs, and consumers' consideration when buying a car has also shifted from the traditional performance indicators to the intelligent experience perspective represented by smart car machines and automatic driving.
As the focus on both the supply and demand ends of the industry shifts from performance to intelligence, the core of automotive innovation shifts from "power engine" engines to "compute engine" semiconductors.
Import substitution is the trend of the times
According to McKinsey's statistics, the proportion of on-board semiconductors in domestic L3 and above high-end autonomous vehicles is expected to increase from 27.8% (US$5 billion) in 2025 to 44.8% (US$13 billion) in 2030. In terms of electrification, with the rapid increase in the penetration rate of new energy vehicles, the "three-electric system" has gradually replaced the traditional fuel power system, accompanied by a significant increase in the proportion of automotive electronic costs in the vehicle.
Under the trend of industry "lack of core" and intelligent upgrading, the trend of import substitution will accelerate, and domestic automotive semiconductors will account for 27% of the global semiconductor market share in 2019, and it is expected to increase to 40% in 2030.
According to the specific application areas of semiconductors in smart cars, automotive chips can be divided into five types:
Computing and control chips: Such chips are mainly microcontrollers and logic ICs, which are mainly used for computational analysis and decision-making, and can be divided into main control chips and auxiliary chips.
Memory chip: Mainly used for data storage functions, including DRAM (dynamic memory), SRAM (static memory), FLASH (flash memory chip) and so on.
Sensing chip: It is mainly used to detect and feel the signal, physical condition or chemical composition of the outside world, and to convert the detected information into an electrical signal or other desired form to transmit to other devices.
Communication chip: Mainly used to transmit, receive and transmit communication signals, including baseband chips, RADIO frequency chips, channel chips, power line carrier communication chips, etc.
Energy supply chip: mainly used to ensure and regulate energy transmission, mainly discrete devices. Specifically, it includes power management chips, transistors (IGBTs, MOSFETs, etc.).
With the rise of domestic auto companies, the trend of software and hardware decoupling is obvious, the original Tier 1 pattern is expected to be broken, and the domestic cockpit Tier 1 market share may significantly increase and may change the chip supply pattern; second, the automotive chip supply chain itself may change from the traditional vertical pattern to the network. With the increase in the complexity of automotive functions, simple system integration methods have become difficult to meet the needs of the intelligent automobile era.
In the future, car companies may begin to pay attention to the definition of hardware systems and supply chain capabilities, adopt horizontal management strategies for core chips, and strengthen control, which may eventually bring about the accelerated evolution of the chip supply chain pattern.
According to McKinsey statistics, it is expected that the domestic automotive semiconductor industry will reach $18 billion in 2025; the market size will reach $29 billion by 2030.
Ant soldiers
Storage ICs are widely used in the automotive market, with DRAM and NAND FLASH accounting for the vast majority of the storage market. DRAM single memory unit only needs a transistor and a capacitor, the overall integration is higher and the capacity is larger, there is a significant advantage in price, is currently the first category in the storage market, accounting for about 53% of the share, DDR series is expected to gradually occupy the mainstream category of the DRAM market with higher transmission rates.
At present, Beijing Junzheng is based on the on-board memory chip, the merger and acquisition of ISSI, the company's "computing + storage + simulation" three major chip business layout took shape. In 2020, the company's memory chip revenue accounted for 70.31%, smart video chip revenue accounted for 13.42%, microprocessor chip revenue accounted for 5.72%, analog and interconnection chip revenue accounted for 8.62%.
Since its inception, Beijing Junzheng has continued to invest in embedded CPUs, video codecs, image signal processing, neural network processors, AI algorithms and other fields, forming two product lines of microprocessor chips and intelligent video chips, and completed the acquisition of Beijing Silicon into the field of memory chips, analog chips and interconnect chips in 2020.
The main business of the subsidiary Beijing Silicon Is the research and development and sales of memory chips, ANALOG and interconnection chips, which are widely used in automotive electronics, industrial-grade medical and communication equipment, and have strong competitiveness in the fields of automotive transmission systems, automotive safety systems, driving information systems and other fields. The largest share of Beijing Silicon's revenue structure is DRAM, accounting for more than half of Beijing Silicon's revenue. As the in-vehicle computing power increases, the demand for automotive storage will increase, and the company is expected to benefit as a leading company in the field of in-vehicle storage. In addition, the company's vehicle specification Nor Flash has entered the volume stage, and the analog interconnection product line is also growing rapidly. The continuous enrichment of the automotive chip product line will further enhance the company's competitiveness in the automotive chip market and will also open up new growth space for the company.
Automotive wireless communication module is the core component of the realization of vehicle networking (including car and car, car and road, car and person) communication, at present, China's wireless communication module enterprises have increased the field of car networking.
In the first half of 2020, the market share of domestic manufacturers in the domestic front-loading communication module exceeded 90%, of which Quectel Communications (35.99%), Huihan Microelectronics (17.53%), and Sierra Wireless (17.04%, Guanghetong acquired its in-vehicle module business) ranked in the top three.
Querge-FarCom's vehicle-scale module AG521R-EU has passed the EU authoritative certification, which can provide end-to-end module solutions for LTE-A high-speed 4G vehicle networking communication and dual-band GNSS positioning needs at home and abroad. Supporting 5G+C-V2X models took the lead in landing, and is cooperating with more than 10 OEMs based on AG55xQ series vehicle scale modules, and some models such as Gaohe HiPhi X under Huaren Express have achieved commercial landing. Due to the high technical and certification barriers of vehicle specification products, the company's first-mover advantage is obvious, and the value of such modules is high, and under the wave of automobile intelligence and networking, it is expected to open up space for the company's long-term performance growth.
Power semiconductors are the core of electrical energy conversion and circuit control of electronic devices, according to Omdia data, in 2020, the global power devices and modules market, CR5 reached 44%, of which Infineon occupies 20% of the market share, ranking first. In the global power IC market, CR5 reached 43%, of which Texas Instruments accounted for 16% of the market share.
According to the statistics of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, in 2020, the output value of China's power discrete device enterprises is still low, of which Wingtech Technology (Nexperia Semiconductor) accounts for the highest proportion of 2.82%, Silan Micro accounts for 1.07%, China Resources Micro accounts for 0.73%, and Yangjie Technology accounts for 0.67%.
With the continuous improvement of the penetration rate of domestic automobile companies (the current overall market share in China is more than 40%, and the market share of pure electric vehicles is higher) and the continuous maturity of domestic IC design and manufacturing capabilities, the penetration rate of domestic chips in the field of intelligent electric vehicles will increase rapidly in the future. On the other hand, due to the high barriers to vehicle regulation verification, the industry's first-mover advantage is significantly magnified, and the domestic enterprises that have taken the lead in entering the vehicle regulation-level supply chain and have strong product scalability capabilities are expected to continue their future competitive advantages and gain long-term growth opportunities.