The home appliance giant has added another "core" thing! Hisense Galanz pushes new products, and Midea will mass-produce 80 million pieces this year...
Wisdom East And West March 8 news, yesterday, home appliance giant Galanz's joint venture company Yuefang Technology launched its first 12nm multi-core high-end industrial-grade application processor NB-2, equipped with a self-developed 64-bit RISC-V core.
This is another "core-making" stage progress shown by the home appliance giant since the beginning of 2022.
Since January this year, Midea, Gree and Hisense have successively announced the progress of chip research and development and production. Midea's self-developed MCU control chip produced about 10 million last year, and is expected to mass-produce 80 million this year; Gree's self-developed EM32 series general-purpose industrial control MCUs have an annual output of tens of millions; Hisense has launched the first fully self-developed 8K AI picture quality chip in China...
According to the statistics of Zhidongxi, Midea, Gree, Hisense, Haier, Galanz, TCL, Skyworth, Konka, Changhong and other well-known home appliance brands have been actively deployed in the field of chip semiconductors by setting up chip departments, setting up subsidiaries or investing in chip start-ups.
Since the UNITED States sanctioned Huawei in 2018, the call for independent control of chips has risen, coupled with the extension of delivery time and rising prices caused by the lack of cores, which has triggered concerns about the chip supply chain around the world, and the realization of local supply of chips has become the focus of the home appliance circle.
In December 2020, Wang Yun, director of the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, mentioned a set of data at the annual conference on home appliance technology held in Shunde, saying that the chip market in the domestic home appliance industry was about 50 billion yuan, the local matching rate was only 5%, and the home appliance chips relied heavily on imports.
It can be seen that China's home appliance industry urgently needs to fill the vacancy of core key components, and the layout of chips by home appliance giants is not a "hot spot", but a real industrial demand.
After several years of planning, what are the results of the chip layout of the home appliance giants that have been laid out for a long time? Can they really gnaw down the hard bone of the chip?
01.
Cross-border core, the four giants of white electricity firmly grasp control and power
The home appliance giant's self-developed chip layout is inseparable from its business.
From the classification point of view, home appliance chips include MCU main control chips, power management chips, connection chips, driver chips and image processing chips. White TV giants have many layoutSMCU, IPM and other control chips, which are like brain-like existence in air conditioners, washing machines and refrigerators; color TV giants are more focused on chip research and development to optimize picture quality and display processing.
Among them, Haier and Hisense are relatively the first to enter the chip field.
As early as 2000, Haier established Beijing Haier Integrated Circuit Design Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Haier Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. The former announced the successful development of the first commercially available ultra-large scale integrated circuit digital TV MPEG-II decoding chip "Patriot I" in 2001, and the latter announced the official mass production of the first MCU chip in 2015, and renamed Shanghai Neusoft Carrier in the same year.
In addition to MCU chips and video codec chips, Haier has also launched a variety of chip products such as IoT chips, display chips, and customized chips.
For example, in the field of IoT chips, Haier established Haier Youjia Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. Subsequently, in June 2017 and March 2019, Haier Youjia and Network Chip supplier Realtek launched the U+ IoT cloud solution U+ Cloud Core and the Cloud Core II. Generation HR3010 respectively.
Hisense injected 500 million yuan in 2005 to establish Qingdao Hisense Core Technology Co., Ltd., and in the same year developed the mainland's first digital video processing chip with independent intellectual property rights, "Xinxin HiView" VPE1X, which reduced the price of similar imported chips from 13 US dollars to 5 US dollars each.
In 2017, Hisense acquired Japan's Toshiba TV and integrated its picture quality chip design team. In June 2019, the chip division Hisense Core and Shanghai Hongyou Company were integrated to establish Qingdao Xinxin Microelectronics Company. Since its development, its picture quality processing chip has been iterated 4 times.
It can be seen that Hisense's chip road mainly revolves around optimizing the display effect, and has achieved a number of "national firsts", including the launch of the 4K 120HZ ultra-high-definition picture quality engine chip in 2015, the release of a fully developed 8K AI picture quality chip in January 2022, and so on.
The bright sword of Gree's "core-making" plan is more high-profile. In 2018, Dong Mingzhu, chairman of Gree, said in an interview with CCTV reporters: "I must succeed in chip research", "I will invest 10 billion yuan this year, 10 billion yuan next year, 30 billion yuan in three years, and even 50 billion yuan after three years. ”
In fact, in 2015, Gree has established the Institute of Microelectronics and the Institute of Power Semiconductors, and disclosed in its 2016 annual report that it will "develop chips with independent intellectual property rights", and in 2017, it announced the establishment of a microelectronics department and plans to build its own chips.
In August 2018, Gree invested 1 billion yuan to establish a wholly-owned subsidiary, Zhuhai Zero Boundary Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd., focusing on the design of MCU chips, AIoT SoCs and power device chips for home appliances such as air conditioners, and plans to sell more than 100 million units by the end of 2022. In the same year, Gree also invested 3 billion yuan to help wingtech technology, the leader of mobile phone ODM, to acquire Nexperia, the dutch power semiconductor leader.
On January 12 this year, Gree said in response to investors' questions that its larger amount of microcontroller chips and power device chips have been independently developed and put into use in large quantities, and some chips have been developed to the second generation. The em32 series of general-purpose industrial control 32-bit MCUs developed by subsidiary Zhuhai Zero Boundary has an annual output of tens of millions of units, mainly used in Gree's full range of air-conditioning products.
In contrast, Midea entered the chip field a little later, and established Shanghai Meiren Semiconductor Co., Ltd. in the second half of 2018 to officially open the road of self-developed chips.
Meiren Semiconductor's main products cover MCU, power, power supply, IoT four home appliance chip series. On this basis, Midea cooperated with Alibaba Cloud in 2019 to launch a customized chip adapted to AliOS Things, and cooperated with Sanan Optoelectronics to establish a third-generation semiconductor joint laboratory to develop GaN (gallium nitride) and SiC (silicon carbide) power semiconductors.
At the same time, for the core component IPM (intelligent power module) that realizes the frequency conversion function of home appliances, Midea's upstream layout is deeper.
Midea first established a joint R&D laboratory for inverter chips with International Rectifier Company, Texas Instruments of the United States, Sanyo of Japan, etc. in 2004, and then established a Chongqing IPM factory in 2014, and achieved mass production of IPM modules in 2019, with an annual output value of 100 million yuan. At the beginning of 2021, the Chongqing IPM factory was transformed into Meiken Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd., facing the chip packaging and testing business.
At the beginning of this year, the relevant person in charge of the Midea Group revealed that the group aims to ship 80 million chips in 2022. It is reported that Meiren Semiconductor plans to achieve mass production of automotive chips in 2024, and will first be applied to the control of new energy vehicle pumps.
On the whole, MCU, IPM and other control chips, as well as video codec chips, power chips, and IoT chips are the chip directions of haier, hisense, Gree, and Midea, which are the key layouts of the four giants of white electricity.
Among them, Haier entered the chip field relatively earliest, covering more abundant chip categories; Hisense mainly focuses on picture quality chips; Gree not only promotes chip research and development, but also participates in cross-border mergers and acquisitions of international power semiconductor leaders; Midea also has a layout in addition to chip design, and has set the goal of entering automotive chips.
02.
Two-pronged approach, the chip investment territory of home appliance giants
Other home appliance brands have also achieved some results on the road of self-developed chips.
As early as October 1999, TCL and SDIC Electronics jointly invested in Echo Microelectronics Company, and in 2021, TCL invested 1 billion yuan to establish tCL Microchip Technology, a semiconductor business platform.
Skyworth and Changhong officially entered the chip field since 2005. In May, Skyworth established Skyworth Semiconductor Co., Ltd., and in June, Changhong invested in the establishment of Sichuan Hongwei Technology Co., Ltd.
In 2011, Skyworth established Shenzhen Skyworth Semiconductor Design Center Co., Ltd. In addition to independent research and development, Skyworth has also carried out multi-party cooperation, such as video IC chips with Jingbaoli Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., and cooperation with South China University of Technology on OLED display technology.
Similarly, Sichuan Hongwei Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Changhong, focuses on MCU chips, digital audio and video processing SoC chips, etc., and in July 2013, jointly announced the successful development of the first composite intelligent voice chip in China with the Institute of Acoustics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Konka established the Semiconductor Technology Division in 2018, and its holding subsidiary, Conchip, was established in Hefei in the same year. According to public information, Conxinwei's main products include SSDs and eMMC memory chips, etc., and its first embedded storage master control chip, KS6581A, will achieve mass production in 2020. In January 2022, Conchivi further introduced strategic investors to increase capital and expand shares to improve research and development capabilities.
In September 2019, Galanz joined hands with StarFive (formerly SiFive China) to launch the IoT chips BF-Xiaojiao and NB-Shishan based on the open source instruction set architecture RISC-V, and in January 2020, it jointly invested with Saifang Technology and Gigabit Yue to establish a joint venture company, Guangdong Yuefang Technology, and initiated the establishment of the "China Core" open source chip ecological cooperation alliance in September 2020.
Recently, Yuefang Technology launched the latest SoC chip product - NB2, for edge computing, deep learning, machine vision and speech processing and other applications, is currently the industry's first edge intelligent high-end processor based on RISC-V architecture.
In addition to setting up subordinate departments and setting up subsidiaries, many home appliance giants have also turned their attention to investing in domestic chip companies.
As can be seen from the chart, almost every home appliance giant has started to invest in the semiconductor industry from a very early age, but it is a matter of more or less, and the investment layout covers MCU master control chips, power management chips, connection chips, driver chips and image processing chips and other types of home appliance chips.
Among them, TCL's chip investment territory covers display chips, AI chips, communication chips and other fields. Konka focuses on memory chips, power management chips, etc., and establishes a semiconductor industry investment company to increase the layout. Galanz chose to cooperate with semiconductor companies with obvious technical advantages to create SoC chip products based on RISC-V open source instruction set architecture.
03.
A wave of lack of cores swept through the home appliance industry
High-end components are still at the mercy of people
From the perspective of grasping the dominant power, the home appliance giant's self-developed chip is an inevitable move, which not only helps to further optimize performance and energy efficiency through tailor-made, but also improves the self-sufficiency rate of core components of home appliances.
At the Foresighted Future Forum of the 2021 China HVAC Industry Development Summit, Ouyang Huai, an analyst at the Industry Online Supply Chain Division, said: "From August 2017 to the end of 2021, the delivery time of microcontrollers and logic chips has been extended from 8 weeks to more than 25 weeks, from 2 months to half a year, and some MCU products have even been extended by more than 40 weeks. ”
Whether it is the extended delivery time or the price increase of core components, it is inevitable that it will be a headache for home appliance manufacturers who have been operating at lower profit margins for a long time. The chip business that domestic home appliance companies have laid out has helped them alleviate the pressure of chip supply under the global lack of cores to a certain extent. Since only a mature process is required, most of the microelectronic devices of home appliances can already be produced in chip foundries in mainland China.
However, overseas chip giants such as FRAM and Texas Instruments have a number of domestic chip leaders who have been working for many years, and it is not easy for them to take into account autonomy and cost performance.
On the one hand, with the improvement of consumer demand for energy saving, intelligence and interconnection of home appliances, the functional requirements of chips have changed; on the other hand, the professionalism and focus of home appliance companies in chip technology are difficult to quickly catch up with chip manufacturers who have been focused for a long time.
To this end, investing more money and increasing research and development efforts are lessons that home appliance giants cannot avoid.
Sufficient capital reserves and massive sales of home appliances are the advantages of home appliance giants in developing chips. However, judging from the growth of its R&D investment in recent years, the degree and difficulty of its investment in R&D may still be "a drop in the bucket".
As shown in the following table, the R& D investment of home appliance giants continues to grow, and the R& D investment of Midea, Haier, TCL and Gree in the first three quarters of 2021 all exceeded 4 billion yuan. Although the R&D investment of other home appliance companies has also increased, it is small.
Compared with the revenue of hundreds of billions of yuan, the proportion of research and development of home appliance companies is obviously not "much". In the first three quarters of 2021, Midea's revenue was 262.943 billion yuan, an increase of 20.75% year-on-year; Gree revenue was 139.549 billion yuan, an increase of 9.48%; Haier's revenue was 170 billion yuan, an increase of 31% year-on-year...
At present, the layout of most home appliance manufacturers in the chip field is mainly in the field of chip design, and they have not been involved in the more "card neck" chip manufacturing, and they are still lacking competitiveness in the high-end core component market.
According to the data released by the Prospective Industry Research Institute, a think tank service organization, more than 74% of the current domestic MCU chip market has long been occupied by overseas chip manufacturers such as Renesas Electronics and STMicroelectronics, and about 90% of the profits of China's MCU market are still in the hands of foreign chip manufacturers.
According to industry insiders, the current mass production of Gree, Midea and other mass production is mainly low-end MCU chips, in the country has a more mature alternative, compared to external procurement can not form a price advantage. If home appliance companies cannot quickly move towards high-end chip design and development, it is inevitable that there will be repeated wheel building.
In contrast, in the field of TV chips, known as the "eye of the screen", the home appliance giant is moving faster into the high-end market. This chip field has long been dominated by MediaTek, a leading chip design leader in Taiwan, and its TV chips have been used in major mainstream TV brands at home and abroad such as Samsung, Sony, Xiaomi, OPPO, Hisense, Changhong, TCL and so on.
In November last year, MediaTek launched the world's first 8K smart TV chip with a 7nm process. After 2 months, Hisense's first self-developed 8K AI picture quality chip has also been released, and the company also revealed on the Hisense video interactive platform that its ultra-high-definition display quality processing chip that supports 8K resolution has begun to be produced.
04.
Conclusion: Cross-border core war continues
Independent research and development has a long way to go
At the moment when the digital wave is swept, home appliance giants need to seek diversified development, and the entry chip is one of its ways to break the game.
Jiang Feng, executive director of the China Household Electrical Appliances Association, said at the 2021 AWE Summit Forum that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, China's home appliance industry will become the only way to transform from the original extensive development model of pursuing speed to innovation-driven development.
Among them, independent research and development of chips is expected to provide support from the bottom for this transformation. Under a series of policy guidance and financial support, the mainland has ushered in a new round of independent chip research and development and entrepreneurship, but in many key chip fields, it is still a long way to compete with the international level in the high-end market.
Chip research and development is inseparable from long-term ism and multi-party cooperation, only by focusing on the long term, doing a good job in the continuous accumulation of talents and research and development, it is possible to drill deeper and go further on the road of independent research and development.
Judging from the recently disclosed achievements, the road of home appliance giants to build cores has gradually entered the right track, as for how to further explore high-end chips and master the right to speak of home appliance chips, it still needs time to verify.
Copyright declaration: Where the content of this public account indicates [original], the content copyright belongs to the author, the pictures and text content that are not marked [original] are reproduced from the network, the copyright belongs to the original, if the pictures and text are infringing, please inform us, we will delete it immediately. Thank you!