Introduction to this issue
According to a study by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), global chip sales reached a record $555.9 billion in 2021. Japan, South Korea, the United States and Europe and other countries have also introduced chip protection laws to promote localization development through huge subsidies. The chip industry is ushering in a golden period of development.
Under the imbalance between supply and demand,
The "chip shortage" phenomenon broke out
In the face of huge demand, chips are also in short supply. Especially since the second half of 2020, there has been a shortage of chips in various industries around the world. Automobile suspension, lack of core of small household appliances, price increases of graphics cards, and shortage of mobile phones have occurred one after another, among which the shortage of chips in the automotive industry is more serious. Global consultancy AlixPartners predicts that due to this, the reduction in automobile production is expected to reach 7.7 million units in 2021, and the loss of revenue in the automotive industry will reach 210 billion US dollars (about 1.36 trillion yuan).
Deloitte Global predicts that many types of chips will still face shortages during 2022, but not as severely as in fall 2020 or 2021, nor will they affect all chips. By the end of 2022, the chip lead cycle will be close to 10-20 weeks; by the beginning of 2023, the industry will reach a basic balance. According to data from U.S. electronic components distributor Soxinyi, in February this year, the global chip order delivery time increased by 5 to 15 weeks compared with October last year. Among them, the maximum delivery time of a certain type of processor is 99 weeks. While the delivery cycle was extended, chip prices also soared, with an average increase of 15%.
Causing a "chip famine"
What are the key factors?
First of all, the direct trigger is that the sudden new crown epidemic has led to the interruption of the global supply chain, the main production enterprises have been forced to stop work and production, and the chip, as an important basic component of the contemporary information technology industry, will directly affect the production of the follow-up related industrial chain once there is a shortage.
Second, the cycle of the industry. Sheng Linghai, vice president of research at Gartner, said that the semiconductor industry has always had a cycle every two to three years, and it is currently in a stage of short supply, so the current chip shortage is actually a normal phenomenon.
In addition, the chip production line technology is highly intensive, the new production line, the need to invest high capital and time costs, when the industry can not accurately predict the future demand, it is very likely to cause chip supply problems.
Japan, South Korea, the United States and Europe have opened up
Subsidy wars
After experiencing the problem of missing cores in the past two years, Japan, South Korea, the United States and Europe have recently stimulated the expansion of local semiconductor production capacity through huge subsidies.
At the end of 2021, Japan's "Emergency Enhancement Plan for the Semiconductor Industry" proposes to increase the revenue of Japanese semiconductor companies by 2030 to 3 times that of 2020.
On January 11, 2022, South Korea passed the Semiconductor Special Law, which intends to provide unprecedented support for the development of Korea's national cutting-edge strategic industries, provide all-round support including investment, research and development, and talent training, strengthen the protection of core technologies and talents, and relax relevant regulatory measures.
On February 4, 2022, the U.S. Competition Act of 2022, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, proposed $52 billion in financial support for the semiconductor industry.
On February 8, 2022, The European Chips Act was officially released, which plans to significantly increase the EU's share of global chip production. At the financial level, the EU intends to use more than 43 billion euros to support the implementation of the bill, including 30 billion euros of government bonds and 13 billion euros of public and private funds.
The mainland's response
In order to enhance the independent research and development capabilities of chips and get rid of dependence on imported chips, the mainland has proposed a chip self-sufficiency rate to reach a target of 70% by 2025.
To this end, in August 2020, the State Council issued the "Several Policies for Promoting the High-quality Development of the Integrated Circuit Industry and the Software Industry in the New Era", pointing out that for 28nm, 65nm and 130nm chips, different degrees of enterprise income tax concessions are given, in addition to support for tariff reductions and exemptions such as equipment and materials, investment and financing policies, talent development, and intellectual property protection.
In December 2021, the "14th Five-Year Plan for National Informatization" issued by the Central Cyber Security and Informatization Commission proposed to accelerate the research of key integrated circuit technologies. Promote innovation in computing chips, memory chips, etc., accelerate the research and development of key materials such as integrated circuit design tools, key equipment and high-purity targets, and promote breakthroughs in characteristic processes such as insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).
Supporting the development of chips has also become the top priority in the 14th Five-Year Plan period of the mainland. In this year's local government work reports, many provinces and cities have also shown their planning and attention to the construction of chips, semiconductors, communications and Internet infrastructure.
The mainland's chip manufacturing giant
I'm grasping the layout
In the chip industry chain, from the upstream design point of view, most of the world's top companies are from the United States, according to IC Insights data, the United States design industry accounts for about 68% of the world. In the midstream of the processing and manufacturing sector, the mainland is at the leading level, according to SIA data, the continent's overall manufacturing capacity accounts for about 36% of the world's total. Its main processes include heat treatment, lithography, etching, ion implantation, thin film deposition, chemical mechanical grinding and cleaning. The downstream cutting, packaging and testing links have large labor demand and low technical requirements, and the advantages of East Asian countries are relatively obvious.
On the whole, there is still a certain gap between the mainland and countries such as the United States and Japan in chip design. In the wave of lack of cores, the delivery cycle of overseas chip giants has shown an upward trend, and some companies are even facing a long-term state of no goods, which has also ushered in a rare "window period" for the mainland to realize the localization layout of chips, so domestic leading chip companies have accelerated the pace, SMIC, Yangtze River Storage, Huahong Semiconductor and other domestic chip manufacturing giants have set up production lines in China, increasing production capacity output in 12-inch and 8-inch wafers. as:
On February 11, SMIC co-CEO Zhao Haijun said that the Shanghai Lingang project has broken ground in early 2022, and the two projects in Beijing and Shenzhen are steadily advancing, and production is expected to be put into operation by the end of 2022. When the three new projects are fully produced, the company's total production capacity will be doubled.
Huahong Semiconductor said it will accelerate the expansion of the total production capacity of the 12-inch production line to 94.5K in 2022, and is expected to gradually release production capacity in the fourth quarter.
Yangtze River Storage has overcome the technical difficulties of 64 layers of 3DNAND flash memory, can design a 256GB SSD (solid state storage) chip, and has now achieved mass production.
Under the rapid development of the technology industry, chips may maintain a high demand trend for a long time. In the face of huge market space, relevant enterprises should strengthen their layout in the industry and enhance their independent research and development capabilities, thereby improving the chip self-sufficiency rate.
WeChat typography: Shen Qingchu
WeChat review: Liu Sha
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