Jiwei network news, on March 31, at the "core" and "car" collaborative crystallization special docking meeting held by the Department of Economy and Information Technology of Anhui Province, Hefei Jinghe Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd., as the organizer, officially announced the opening of the oem business of vehicle rules chips, and will do its best to integrate into the "core" and "car" collaboration family of Anhui Province in the future, contributing to the development of Anhui Province.
Jinghe general manager Cai Huijia pointed out at the event site that the safety of the car driving for the reliability of the on-board chip, compared to consumer products have higher requirements, chip foundry enterprises want to base themselves in the automotive field, AECQ certification will be a must for car companies, at present, Jinghe has completed the 90nm display driver chip and 110nm display driver chip AEC-Q100 certification; in addition, 55nm display driver chip, 110nm microprocessor chip, The AEC-Q100 with the 110nm power management chip and the 90nm image sensor chip will also be completed in 2022.
In fact, since the first quarter of 2021, Jinghe has cooperated with some high-quality customers to carry out the research and development of automotive chips, and by the first quarter of 2022, it has achieved mass production of 110nm vehicle center console display driver chips, mass production of 90nm vehicle monitoring image sensor chips, and tapeouts of 90nm vehicle control area AMOLED LCD knob display driver chips.
Cai Huijia said that starting from the second quarter of this year, Jinghe and more customers have opened wider cooperation in more automotive chip fields, including touch display integrated car chips, automotive microprocessors and automotive power chips.
Based on display driver chips, TSG has expanded its product boundaries to CIS, PMIC and MCUs in the past few years, and now it has further entered the new growth dimension of the automotive field. The achievements and decisions being made by Jinghe reflect that the company's positioning and development mission are quietly changing.
Positioning: From fish to water
The original intention of Jinghe landing in Hefei was to support the new display industry and make up for the shortcomings of the "core screen device combination" strategy at that time. At that time, the crystallization and display industry was in full swing in Hefei, the former was fish, the latter was water. There is no doubt that in the process of crystallization and synthesis, whether it is at the capital level, policy level or even business level, the Hefei government plays a vital role.
Today, Jinghe has achieved leapfrog development, doubled its revenue for three consecutive years, and completed its profit plan beyond expectations in 2021, becoming the fastest profitable Chinese mainland foundry enterprise.
According to TrendForce's ranking of the world's top ten foundries in the fourth quarter of 2021, Jinghe entered the top ten list for the first time with a single quarter revenue of $350 million. TrendForce believes that the active expansion of Jinghe is the main reason why it is in the top ten list. According to the understanding of Jiwei Network, from 10,000 pieces (12 inches) of monthly production capacity in 2018 to more than 110,000 pieces today, it took only 4 years for Wafer He to become the third largest pure wafer foundry in Chinese mainland (excluding foreign-controlled wafer fabs).
With the increasing volume and the more stable pace, Jinghe has become the backbone of the high-tech industry in Hefei and even Anhui Province. The role played also changed from a "fish" nourished by water to a part of "water".
Recently, the "Anhui Province "14th Five-Year" Automobile Industry High-quality Development Plan" was released, which clearly stated that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, Anhui will strive to build Anhui into a global intelligent new energy vehicle innovation agglomeration area. Hefei has previously replaced the strategic summary of "core screen device combination" with "core screen vapor combination", behind the word difference, it reflects that Hefei City and the entire Anhui Province have reached a new historical height in attaching importance to the development of the automobile industry.
As the global automotive industry is transforming towards intelligent and electrified upgrades, the demand for automotive chips is growing explosively. In the past year, many automobile companies have limited the production capacity of the whole vehicle due to the problem of "lack of core". In this environment, Jinghe's official entry into the field of in-vehicle chips can provide localized production capacity support for the automotive chip supply chain in Anhui Province, and deepen the coordinated development of the province's "core" and "car".
Under the organization of the Department of Economy and Information Technology of Anhui Province, integrated circuit design, manufacturing and packaging enterprises in Anhui Province signed the Memorandum of Cooperation on Industrial Chain with car companies at the recent docking meeting. Cai Huijia, general manager of Jinghe, said at the scene that Jinghe is willing to work with everyone to achieve win-win cooperation and realize the localization of automotive chips as soon as possible.
As a representative of design enterprises in Anhui Province, the person in charge of Jiefa Technology told Jiwei Network that the Hefei government attaches importance to the development of integrated circuits and new energy automobile industries and has formulated an industrial chain mechanism, which has played a good coordination role in pulling through upstream and downstream industrial collaboration, and at the same time, it is also very pragmatic in investment and policy implementation, which is of great help to enterprises.
When talking about Jinghe, the person in charge of Jiefa Technology said that Jinghe has made the industrial chain of Hefei integrated circuit more perfect and can attract more outstanding enterprises to land. In addition, Jinghe has mature production lines in 110nm and 90nm, and is also moving towards 55nm, 40nm and 28nm, and the certification of vehicle-grade chips is also constantly breaking through, which can bring great relief to the current lack of cores in Hefei and even the entire central China region.
The transformation of Jinghe from fish to water is obvious to enterprises in Anhui Province. It is enough to see that the crystallization model is feasible, and the Hefei state-owned assets-led aggregation forward model is sustainable. At the same time, the state-owned crystallization also proves that it can play an important role in promoting the supporting construction of the local industrial chain and the development of related industries. With the future expansion of production, the process of exploration and the completion of the listing on the science and technology innovation board, Jinghe will further sublimate this promotion effect, and the so-called doubts of the outside world will not be broken.
From fish to water, it is the change that jinghe has undergone in the industrial chain of Anhui Province. When focusing on the company's own development process, the oem of the car specification chip also released another signal.
Mission: From making up for shortcomings to chasing deer in the future
Due to the huge demand for display drive chips in early years, the foundry capacity of mainland drive chips is seriously insufficient. The foundation of Jinghe is to make up for the shortcomings of drive chip production capacity for Chinese mainland, which also leads to the drive chip foundry orders from the first few major customers can almost fill the production capacity of the whole factory, and the outside world has also had doubts about Jinghe's customer concentration, single business, and insufficient research and development capabilities.
In order to achieve greater goals, Crystal He constantly tries to jump out of the comfort zone. In addition to pursuing higher-end OEM capabilities for OLED driver chips, GDS has also broadened its product types to MCUs, PMICs, and CIS. Nowadays, Jinghe has been upgraded to the field of automotive chips as a whole, and its development mission is obviously no longer as simple as the original "making up for shortcomings".
As we all know, automotive chips are fiercely competitive and dominated by European and American IDM manufacturers for a long time, and wafer foundries have always been insufficient in the past to invest in the field of automotive chips and have not been willing to expand their business. However, with the upgrading of the automotive industry, the amount of chips used is increasing, and the business focus of other wafer foundries has also begun to tilt to this field. This also means that if Jinghe chooses to enter the game, it will stand on the same starting line with other established powerhouses and compete for the most important growth point of the semiconductor industry in the next decade.
Over the past decade, smartphones have been the most important growth driver in the semiconductor industry, followed by PCs and home appliances. For the growth point of the next era, there is no doubt that the most mentioned in the industry is the automobile. Jinghe senior management told Jiwei Network that new energy vehicles and intelligent vehicles will need automotive chips that are several times the demand at this stage, and automotive chips are the focus of development of all wafer foundries, which is also the main reason for Jinghe to enter the field.
However, how to develop the OEM business of vehicle specification chips and work with upstream and downstream partners in the industrial chain to achieve domestic substitution is still a topic of heated discussion in the industry. At the docking meeting, the person in charge of Hefei Aichuangwei, who is also the representative of the design company, told Jiwei Network that there are still many problems in the development of local car specification chips, such as a large variety of products and dispersion, making it difficult for vehicle-level chip companies to develop and grow; high technical thresholds and standards for vehicle-level chips, long production verification cycle; and lack of certification system production lines for the production of vehicle-level chips.
The person in charge of Aichuang Micro believes that local enterprises, including all the representatives of Jinghe and Aichuang Micro, need to break the traditional supply chain level, through the deep integration of the demand side and the supply side, rely on market demand, and give priority to domestic substitution for chips that are urgently needed and have low technical thresholds, so as to solve the problem of insufficient chip supply in the short term. For high-end chips, it is necessary to set up major joint research projects such as vehicles, systems, components, chips, etc., and customize research and development pre-production. Finally, it is also necessary to encourage policy enterprises to jointly invest or establish industrial alliances, sort out the medium- and long-term vehicle-grade chip needs of the automotive industry in different echelons, and guide chip companies to develop and manufacture in a targeted manner.
Among the above-mentioned solutions mentioned by the person in charge of AichuangWei, there is no doubt that Jinghe plays an indispensable role. As the third largest wafer fab in mainland China, the oem of vehicle-grade chips will have a profound impact on solving the problem of domestic substitution of automotive chips.
Grasping the next growth point of the industry, not afraid of difficulties and competition, now the development mission of Jinghe has become "chasing the deer in the future", so Jinghe is ready to go. Cai Huijia revealed at the docking meeting that Jinghe has set up a special team for vehicles, covering quality, research and development, marketing and manufacturing, and all departments of the company are involved in better promoting the quality system of vehicle chips.
In the longer term, Cai Huijia once pointed out in an interview with Jiwei Network that Jinghe has two corporate visions, the first is to become the world's first panel drive wafer foundry, and the second is to become one of the most outstanding integrated circuit manufacturing companies in China.
At present, Jinghe has achieved the goal of being the first in the market share of LCD panel driver chip foundry. The official announcement of entering the OEM of vehicle specification chips marks to a certain extent that Jinghe has begun to strive for the realization of the second vision.
Cai Huijia stressed that in the next step, the company will continue to actively tap the potential, invest more resources to continuously break through technology, and let production, research and development, and business go hand in hand. On the basis of mature technology, independent research and development of characteristic processes to meet the diversified needs of customers, advanced process technology, continuous improvement downward.