Per reporter: Li Lei Per editor: Wu Yongyong
Under the global digital wave driven by 5G and cloud computing, high-end network chips are at the center of this digital transformation. If the data center in the era of big data is the "brain" of society, then the high-end network switching chip is like a blood vessel in the brain, supporting and maintaining the operation of the brain, and the importance can be seen.
On the other hand, although the market share of domestic system manufacturers is already very high, many core components, including switch chips, are still dominated by foreign giants. In the tide of upgrading China's Internet infrastructure, some excellent local enterprises with their own core technologies and more localization have great potential.
Recently, YunheZhi. As a company established at the end of last year and officially started operations at the beginning of this year, it can get bets from top VCs in the industry such as Qiming Venture Capital and China Internet Investment Fund, which reflects the degree of capital's favor for this track on the one hand, and naturally also highly recognized by Yunhe Zhi network on the other hand. What the hell is going on with this company? What innovative technologies are worth paying attention to?
Recently, the Daily Economic News interviewed Cao Tuqiang, founder, chairman and CEO of Yunhe Zhi.com, who explained in detail the market opportunities, core competitiveness and business models faced by Yunhe Zhi.com, as well as future plans.
<h2>From "domestic substitution" to "high-end subversion", it is time for high-end chip track entrepreneurship</h2>
As a senior industry expert who has worked in the world's leading network technology company for more than 20 years and served as a global vice president, and is also a successful serial entrepreneur, Cao Tuqiang uses "time and place" to describe the innovation and entrepreneurial opportunities in the current domestic high-end chip track.
Forecasts from market research firm Dell'Oro show that the cloud computing era will generate more than $200 billion in data center capital expenditure markets, of which network equipment spending accounts for more than 20%, with annual growth rates exceeding double digits. As the core technology products of network equipment network chips and network operating system software is the top priority, these two expenditures will account for more than 40% of the overall network equipment expenditure, is a huge market with a scale of hundreds of billions of yuan and will continue to grow rapidly.
On the other hand, domestic demand is also surging. Cao Tuqiang introduced: "In the past 20 years, China has been the world's leading and technological leader in both the Internet application side and the demand side, and it is still growing and expanding, and the demand for high-end network chips has also risen. Internet manufacturers and major operators represented by Alibaba and Tencent have a very large demand for high-end network chips. China's data center switches maintain double-digit growth rates every year, and are also the highest in the world. Among them, the fastest growing and most demanded is the high-end switch chip, which is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our cloud. ”
Because of this, Cao Tuqiang does not simply call what YunheZhi network is currently doing as "domestic substitution" or "high-end substitution", he prefers to call it "high-end subversion". In his and his team's view, focusing on the development of world-class high-performance network chips and solutions is not only to continue the tradition, but also to carry out a market and product technology subversion and iteration.
<h2>With a high start and broad prospects, YunheZhi Network has established a solid moat</h2>
In fact, in recent years, as data centers have become more popular and important, many network switching chip companies have joined the "team war". Under the traditional advantages of foreign giants and the attack of network switching chip manufacturers from all over the world, it is not easy to break through. From the perspective of research and development, domestic companies still lack the experience and accumulation of high-end data center chips, and their understanding of the evolution of high-end chip architectures is also relatively lacking.
As Cao Tuqiang said, the biggest threshold in the field of high-end network chips is actually talent and capital. "To make a good product, you need to grasp all aspects, such as designing a leading product architecture, using advanced technology, investing in research and development funds, and most importantly: having an experienced and excellent team can make the product stronger and fill the gap in the relevant fields in China."
From this point of view, Yunhe Zhi network has a unique advantage. First of all, most of the founders and core team members of YunheZhi network come from Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, HiSilicon, ZTE and other well-known enterprises at home and abroad, and have successfully developed several generations of successful products in the field of high-end network chip research and development, and have accumulated rich experience, which are very important for chip research and development.
From the product point of view, the product positioning of Yunhe Zhi network is to develop the missing high-end data center chips in China. The current market of such products is 100% occupied by foreign companies, the product line is completely absent from the domestic product figure, the gap between the two products is between 2 and 3 generations, and the advent of Yunhe related products can quickly fill this part of the gap. While developing high-end data center products, Yunhe Zhi network is also laying out the mid-range product series and the network chip market outside the data center.
Compared with foreign giants, Yunhe also has a more prominent feature is that as a local company, it can quickly meet the actual needs of Chinese users through localization, and carry out forward-looking new structural design in combination with industry trends, which not only customizes flexible and high-speed architecture design solutions, but also greatly shortens the development cycle.
<h2>Promote the core 25.6T chip into the market, and there will be a window of 10 to 20 years in the future</h2>
According to Cao Tuqiang, in terms of high-end network chips, the largest domestic demand side is currently concentrated in Internet manufacturers, operators and other large customers such as financial institutions, and what Yunhe wants to do is to help them build the next generation of new networks.
Cao Tuqiang said frankly that the current Yunhe Zhi network is still in the product research and development stage, the main goal is to promote the core 25.6T chip into the market, the new financing funds will also focus on the use of goals, including expanding team building, accelerating chip research and development and market landing. "In order to achieve this goal, we will concentrate on technical research and strive to achieve it within 3 years."
Chen Nan, executive director of Qiming Venture Capital, the leading investment institution of the angel round of financing of Yunhe Zhi.com, said when talking about the market opportunities faced by Yunhe that the wave of IT led by the cloud is irreversible, and the transformation of the cloud actually has a life cycle of several decades. "Yunhezhi Network entered early in the window period, both in terms of timing and future position. It grasped the current opportunity, first of all, the data center 'crown' high-end 25.6T switch chip to the market, after success, it established a minimum foothold, on this basis to expand the future opportunities is very large. So from this point of view, this window period I think is at least a 10 to 20 year window period. ”
Cao Tuqiang also said: "Now the data center Ethernet switching chip track is a starting point, in the future in addition to the switch market, Yunhe products also have more imagination space, such as the huge router market, the Internet of Things of all things, and even the Internet of Vehicles, which we hope to break through in the future."
"In the future, our key challenge is to design a completely new system architecture that can operate at high speeds in new areas and continue to meet the new needs generated by the market. The acceleration of the system requires the design of a completely new architecture and the adoption of new technologies, such as the use of more advanced 5nm process chips, to achieve new designs, new ideas, and new standards. Cao Tuqiang concluded.
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