Since the beginning of this year, the three major indexes have fallen all the way, and the semiconductor index has also been doomed, but there is such a stock that has been favored by many institutions to rise against the market, and the stock price has nearly doubled since February, which is Fudan Microelectronics, which has FPGA business.
See Zhi Research believes that first of all, the company's business is in a very prosperous track, the demand is very strong, and the order is full, especially the FPGA track market attention is very high, and from last year's financial report, it can be seen that the FPGA is the company's highest gross profit margin business, and it is the fastest growing business.
On the other hand, the company has a relatively strong moat, because it belongs to the design type of enterprise, research and development capabilities and existing patents are the key to the company's competition. Then see the wisdom research will focus on leading everyone to see what is driven by the hot demand in the FPGA industry, how sustainable is the future and how is the technical advantages of Fudan Microelectronic's products?
What an FPGA is
FPGA is a programmable chip, after production according to the functional requirements can be modified, the flexibility is very high is its biggest feature, on the other hand, its peak computing power is very high, and has low power consumption characteristics, very suitable for big data computing. From the perspective of application scenarios, it is very suitable for data centers and artificial intelligence operations.
We can also verify the above conclusions by comparing the performance of FPGAs with other chip types such as CPUs, GPUs, and ASICs.
Although the peak computing power of asIIc is the highest among all chips, its specificity and customization properties are very strong, that is to say, this chip is designed for what functions and products before production, and it can only be used in this mode.
CPU is a more common processor for electronic products, and it is compared with FPGAs, the biggest difference is in the way the visual algorithm calculates the process, the CPU uses single thread, and the FPGA uses multi-threading, so the FPGA operation speed will be faster in the visual algorithm.
When it comes to visual algorithm processing, it can't escape the GPU, it must be the fastest in this field, but its power consumption and latency are relatively high, and it is also a very customized product, which cannot change the function of the hardware after the design is completed. FPGAs, on the other hand, can enrich performance by changing the code.
Through the above simple analysis, we can have a preliminary understanding of the characteristics of FPGAs and other chips. Next, let's see where the demand catalysis of FPGAs comes from.
Five demand catalysts for FPGAs
From the perspective of the downstream application of FPGAs, network communication accounts for the largest proportion, reaching 41%; followed by industrial control accounting for 32%; automotive electronics accounting for 6%, and artificial intelligence accounting for 4%.
1, network communication is crucial is the base station, FPAG can be used in wireless communication base station and RF processing circuit board. In wired communication and communication, it can also be used to complete the control of signals in switches, routers and other circuit boards, data transmission and other functions.
The construction demand of 5G base stations this year has not been reduced compared with the first two, and according to the domestic plan, 600,000 units will be built this year, achieving a cumulative plan of 2 million seats. Therefore, the demand for FPGA, of course, some people will have doubts, the first two years of 5G base stations also have a considerable degree of demand, then this part of the demand increment year-on-year change should not be large, such concerns are also reasonable.
2, in addition to 5G base stations, the demand for FPGAs in data centers is also a very important factor this year. Judging from the previous East And West Calculation Project, this year the state will increase the construction of data centers, especially the demand for FPGAs in some high-performance data centers will increase. Because the low power consumption of FPGAs can meet the requirements of the country for low energy consumption of data centers on the one hand, it can also be well used for big data computing. In addition, its low latency can also play a good advantage in the "migration" of data.
3, in the industry FPGA application scope is also very diverse, such as robots, industrial machine cameras, factory automation systems, but also can be used in smart grid automation equipment. In the context of the Industrial Internet of Things, the flexibility of FPGAs can be fully demonstrated.
4, automotive electronics is a very concerned area of FPGA, even if this field in the FPGA once used to account for a relatively small proportion, but with the increase in the penetration rate of smart cars and electric vehicles, the growth space in this field will be the largest.
FPGAs can be used for object detection, image and algorithm processing in automotive autonomous driving; in in-vehicle infotainment systems, FPGAs can be connected to on-board devices such as dashboards and sensors for video interface and I/O expansion, image processing and format conversion; in electric vehicle control, FPGAs can be used for motor drive, battery management, and power converters.
5. In terms of artificial intelligence, FPGAs benefit from high computing power and are more suitable for machine learning and other fields.
There are many application areas of FPGA, so there will be some no for some specifications and performance parameters of the product, and then look at how competitive the FPGA manufacturers are.
Competitiveness of FPGA manufacturers
It should be known that the inventor of FPGA is Ross Freeman, the founder of Xilinx, so the most advanced technology in this field and the largest market share in the field today are Xilinx.
Among the enterprises in the mainland, Fudan Microelectronics is the most advanced in this field, and the process process, door scale and transmission speed are better than similar companies (specific parameters can refer to the following figure). Process optimizations enable lower power consumption and faster computing speeds.
After understanding the technicality, let's take a look at the sales and profitability of domestic companies' products
Judging from the sales of FPGAs of domestic companies alone, the operating income of the project has doubled, but the gross profit margin difference is still very large. Specifically, Fudan Microelectronics is 84.71%; Unigroup Tongchuang (referring to the parent company Unigroup Guowei) is 77.20%; Andu Technology is 36.13%.
In addition, these three companies are semiconductor design companies, and from the perspective of R&D investment, Fudan Microelectronics' R&D expenditure accounts for the highest proportion of operating income, and the specific data are as follows: Fudan Microelectronics 749 million yuan (29%), Unigroup Guowei 866 million yuan (16%), and Anlu Technology 244 million yuan (36%). (Note: In parentheses, the share of total revenue is used)
In contrast, the main business income structure of Anlu Technology is relatively single compared with the other two companies, mainly doing FPGA products, but the company started late, the technical reserves are relatively backward, and the number of patents is still relatively small. At present, more than 90% of the products sold are 55nm FPGAs, but the company's emphasis on research and development is still very high from the perspective of investment as a proportion of revenue, and the future will continue to look forward to the company's new product landing.
Summary: Through the business split of Fudan Microelectronics, it is concluded that FPGAs are the growth rate of the company's main business, and it is also a segment with the most room for growth in the future, and the most important increments in the catalyst factors are data centers and automotive electronics. Comparing with other companies in the industry, FPGA-related businesses have doubled their growth last year, and more importantly, Fudan Microelectronics has the highest gross profit margin on this product, and the investment in research and development is also very high. The strong demand stemming from FPGA products will continue to be verified in the future.