Author: Ice on the second road
TYPESETTING: LEAHMA
Exhibit: SOlab
In-depth good text, 5879 words = 10 minutes of reading
From December 23 to 26, 2022, the 7th China Manufacturing Power Forum initiated by CEFC Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, General Academy of Mechanical Sciences, China Think Tank and other authoritative institutions was held in Baoding, Hebei.
The theme of the forum is "short board, forged long board, solid bottom plate", focusing on hot issues such as "stuck neck" problems, filling in blanks, and strengthening chains, and is known as "Davos of manufacturing", helping manufacturing enterprises to take the path of specialization and differentiated development, and realize China's manufacturing from big to strong.
The 7th China Manufacturing Power Forum Source: Baidu
Huang Qifan, academic advisor of China Finance 40 Forum and former mayor of Chongqing, attended the forum and delivered a speech, how to transform a manufacturing country into a manufacturing power? Huang Qifan believes that the five major pieces that can form a trillion-dollar market level in the next two or three decades have emerged, and China should actively carry out forward-looking layout and take the initiative to form a number of globally competitive industrial chain clusters around these key industries. The development of China's manufacturing industry has problems such as pre-aging and declining, and many industrial chains are easy to be sealed by a sword.
In the 20 years since the new century, mobile phones, basic computers, LCD panels, televisions, automobiles, etc., the market size of these products often exceeds trillion yuan, and in the world more than trillion trillions of dollars. Which country and city can develop these industries will be at the forefront of international competition.
The State Council's 14th Five-Year Plan outlines that starting from the whole machine products that conform to the direction of future industrial change and create a strategic overall industrial chain, which is what it means.
In the next two or three decades, five major pieces of trillion-dollar level can be formed, roughly including the following five, one is driverless new energy vehicles, the second is home robots, the third is head-mounted AR, VR glasses and helmets, the fourth is flexible display, and the fifth is 3D printing equipment. It is necessary to actively carry out forward-looking layout and take the initiative to form a number of globally competitive industrial chain clusters around these key industries.
Huang Qifan's speech caused heated discussions in academia and industry. The specially invited experts of Xinguang Society tried to make part of the interpretation, and it should be noted that this only represents the personal views of the specially invited experts of Xinguang Society.
Q1: What are the characteristics of which trillion-dollar emerging industries in history?
A1: As Huang Qifan said: In fact, every two or three decades, 4-5 representative durable consumer goods will enter thousands of households and become the mainstream of consumption. This is true in China, Asia, Europe and the United States. For example, in the 50-70s of the last century, watches, bicycles, sewing machines, radios, gramophones and so on. In the eighties and nineties, it was air conditioners, televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, video recorders, and so on.
In the 20 years since the new century, mobile phones, basic computers, LCD panels, televisions, automobiles, etc., the market size of these products often exceeds trillion yuan, and in the world more than trillion trillions of dollars.
Experts invited by Xinguang Society believe that the characteristics of trillion-dollar emerging industries are knowledge-intensive and technology-intensive, large market potential, strong spillover capacity, good comprehensive benefits and strong technical uncertainty, which have profoundly changed human production and lifestyle, and can usually directly serve individual users, that is, the C-end. Annual product shipments are measured in tens of millions or even hundreds of millions.
Taking PC as an example, August 12, 1981, IBM officially launched the world's first personal computer - IBM PC, using Intel 8088 microprocessor with a main frequency of 4.77MHz and running Microsoft's MS-DOS operating system.
The world's first PC image source: IBM
With the continuous development of information technology, traditional PCs including desktops, laptops and workstations have accelerated their penetration into all aspects of production and life, greatly improving people's ability to collect, process and analyze information data. According to IDC, global PC shipments reached 349 million units in 20221.
Affected by the epidemic, the weak consumer electronics market and other factors, global PC shipments in 2022 decreased by 16.2% compared to 2021, but still reached 286.2 million units.
Q2: Why is the recently hotly debated quantum computer not included?
A2: The superiority of quantum computers is undoubted, taking the public key encryption algorithm RSA in the field of information security as an example, traditional computers take 200 trillion years, while quantum computers only need a few minutes to complete easily.
At present, governments around the world are closely deploying around quantum technology, and more than 100 quantum computing companies around the world are fiercely competitive. In December 2022, Observer.com interviewed Zhang Hui, general manager of Hefei Origin Quantum Computing Technology Co., Ltd., the developer of the mainland's latest quantum computer "Wukong". The original text is as follows:
Observer: At the current rate of development, when will quantum computers achieve large-scale commercial use?
Zhang Hui: From a global perspective, quantum computing companies have just started from research and development to engineering commercialization, and the current goal is to achieve it by 2030. Including IBM, Google, the strongest teams in the quantum computing track, as well as our origin, all hope to enter the era of universal quantum computers with high bits in 2030.
Quantum computer source: Baidu
In fact, quantum computers are better at parallel computing of massive data and simulating molecular principles, which are different from the functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, running games, playing video movies, and WeChat that PCs are good at. In addition, from the perspective of application, quantum computers need to enter thousands of households, and they also need to solve the problem of "extreme cold" in engineering, that is, operating in a specific low temperature environment, controlling temperature changes, shockproof, anti-electromagnetic interference, and so on.
In 20-30 years, general-purpose quantum computers will form a trillion-dollar market size, and no quantum computer scientist has ever dared to predict so. This may be 30-50 years from now.
Q3: Recently, artificial intelligence has exploded out of the circle, for example, the number of registered users of ChatGPT exceeded 100 million in two months, why is the artificial intelligence industry not included?
A3: Artificial intelligence is a very broad concept, simply put, it is a new technical science that researches and develops theories, methods, technologies and application systems for simulating, extending and expanding human intelligence. Profound changes in lifestyles such as transportation, medical care, education, logistics, pension, culture, and sports are important forces driving the scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation.
In September 2022, Baidu CEO Robin Li judged that the development of artificial intelligence has "changed directionally at the technical level and commercial application level." Sage predicts that by 2030, the advent of artificial intelligence will bring an additional 14% improvement in global GPD, equivalent to a $15.7 trillion increase.
Artificial intelligence is often considered a branch of computer science and is not directly aimed at individual users. In fact, in the next two or three decades, five major pieces that can form trillions of dollars, driverless new energy vehicles, home robots, head-mounted AR, VR glasses and helmets, flexible displays and 3D printing equipment, are inseparable from the progress of artificial intelligence! Especially in terms of optimizing products and reducing costs, it has brought revolutionary changes to human production and life.
Of course, the progress of artificial intelligence is not separated from the progress of chip technology, or the progress of chip technology is an important prerequisite for the progress of artificial intelligence.
Q4: Why do you talk about driverless new energy vehicles?
Is it an important application scenario for chips in the future?
A4: At 21:00 EST on February 7, 2023, US President Joe Biden gave the answer in his State of the Union address. "Today's cars require up to 3,000 chips each. Because there were not enough cores, American automakers could not produce enough cars, and car prices rose."
The analysis believes that by 2035, the penetration rate of electric vehicles will increase from the current 2% to 44%. The share of sales of advanced autonomous vehicles (Level 3, Level 4 and Level 5) will also gradually increase. In the future, fully autonomous vehicles will be further equipped with high-end chips such as lidar sensors, image recognition systems and 5G communications, and it is expected that each driverless new energy vehicle will need more than 5,000 chips. Of course, in addition to technical factors, the popularization of driverless new energy vehicles also depends on the support policies and ecosystems of various countries around the world.
Q5: Why is home robot an important application scenario for chips in the future?
A5: When it comes to household robots, the first thing that comes to mind is the sweeping robot that mainly sweeps the floor, that is, an automated variant of the vacuum cleaner. In fact, sweeping robots are far from intelligence, close to home appliances, and are only the lowest end version of household robots.
According to Baidu Encyclopedia, the future home robot is used in the home environment or similar environment to meet the user's life needs for the purpose of service robots, mainly engaged in home service robots, the types can be divided into household robots, educational robots, entertainment robots, elderly and disabled robots, home safety supervision robots, chef robots, handling robots, and so on. It can provide consumers in the new era with one-stop service that simplifies complexity.
Future home robots will integrate the latest achievements in deep learning, speech recognition, computer vision, cloud computing, natural language processing and other fields. It is necessary to carry the main control chip, microcontroller, DSP processor, various sensors, vision AI chip with large computing power, voice chip, motor drive unit, battery and power management unit and other chips.
Once home robots enter thousands of households, they will undoubtedly become an important application scenario in the chip industry.
Q6: Why do you talk about head-mounted AR and VR glasses and headsets?
Is it an important application scenario for chips in the future?
A6: According to Baidu Encyclopedia, the metaverse (Metaverse) is a virtual world built by human beings using digital technology, which maps or surpasses the real world by the real world, and can interact with the real world, and has a digital living space with a new social system. The "metaverse" itself is not a new technology, but an integration of a large number of existing technologies, including 5G, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, blockchain, digital currency, Internet of Things, human-computer interaction, etc.
The hardware entrance (VR/AR/MR/brain-computer interface) and operating system, back-end infrastructure (5G/computing power and algorithms/cloud computing/edge computing), and underlying architecture (engine/development tools/digital twin/blockchain) of the metaverse experience have created endless demand for computing power. Adam White, president of Infineon's Power and Sensor Systems Division, claims that existing computing power needs to be increased by more than 1,000 times to live in the virtual world. This is a conservative estimate. The chip world under the meta-universe is bound to undergo revolutionary changes, and all kinds of chips have enough opportunities to provide part of the computing power for the meta-universe and find space to play a role in the new meta-universe world.
Q7: Why is flexible display an important application scenario for chips in the future?
A7: Flexible display refers to a light, thin, strong, deformable and bendable display device made of soft materials, and its function is to realize any shape of display product form and provide flexible visual information. According to CINNO Research, the global demand for flexible OLED in folding smartphones will reach 38 million pieces in 2024.
According to a report by Frost & Sullivan, a US business consulting firm, the market size of the global flexible electronics industry will reach $304.94 billion in 2025. With the realization of application scenarios such as smart cockpits, mobile phones worn on wrists, PCs and tablets folded into small books, free-rolling TVs, and wearable devices, flexible displays will be enough to form a trillion-dollar market size in the next 20-30 years.
The touch, fingerprint recognition, camera and other functions are integrated into the flexible display panel, so that it has human-computer interaction functions such as display, touch, and sensing at the same time, so that the display screen is upgraded from a single information output end to an information interaction end, which must rely heavily on the display driver chip, especially the large use of flexible chips.
Q8: Why is 3D printing equipment an important application scenario for chips in the future?
A8: 3D printing equipment refers to additive manufacturing equipment, which can simplify the maintenance and support of on-site products, by enabling digital file on-demand production, with significant advantages such as precision up to microns, rapid prototyping, flexible design, ease of use, waste minimization, etc., to achieve composite product development and complex structure formation of different kinds of materials such as metals and ceramics, fully meeting the needs of high-precision, rapid and low-cost manufacturing in aerospace, medical, automotive, mold industry and other fields. It is an important development direction of intelligent factories, which is enough to form a trillion-dollar market size.
Top-down 3D printing devices need to be optimized with a full combination of computer vision, sensors, and telemetry. Based on precise positioning + splicing area precision control technology, real-time manufacturing process monitoring of large-size, integrated and high-precision parts is realized, which is naturally inseparable from MCU main control chips, motor driver chips, power chips, USB to serial port chips, display driver chips, etc. Future 3D printing devices may also be based on AI to create more complex and larger parts, and the demand for AI chips, GPUs and other chips will grow exponentially.
Q9: Will chips form a trillion-dollar market size in the next 20-30 years?
A9: In 2021, the global chip market was worth $555.9 billion.
In the next 20-30 years, enterprise digitalization is accelerating, and the trend of the Internet of Everything in the future is becoming more and more obvious. Once the five major pieces of driverless new energy vehicles, home robots, head-mounted AR, VR glasses and helmets, flexible displays, and 3D printing equipment form a trillion-dollar market size, it will drive more global chip production capacity, which will double the market size of the chip industry and form a trillion-dollar market size.
Q10: In the next 20-30 years, how will China's chip industry respond to the demand for five major pieces that will form a trillion-dollar field?
A10: In his speech, Huang Qifan discussed the China factor of the five major trillion-dollar market sizes.
Because in the course of the past fifty or sixty years, the four major pieces and five major pieces of the past three eras were basically invented by Europe, the United States and Japan, and then we introduced and digested them. Therefore, whether our washing machines, refrigerators, color TVs or laptops, mobile phone production capacity is the world's first, the world's forefront, but in fact, its source innovation can be said to be imported products, are the introduction, digestion, absorption, joint venture production capacity.
Then for the four major pieces and five major pieces of the future generation, in addition to further opening up and further introducing digestion and absorption, we must have our own brand, our own production line, and our own newly developed products to form three major pieces and four major pieces and five major pieces. Such products are generally formed by us independently, then headhunting enterprises are formed by our independent enterprises. The foundry leader is also arranged by our own enterprises, so the entire manufacturing industry chain, whether it is placed in China or around the world, we control the initiative of the world-class industrial chain cluster arrangement.
Experts invited by Xinguang Society believe that the development process of China's chip industry has many similarities with the four major pieces and five major pieces of the past three eras, that is, "it was invented by Europe, the United States and Japan, and then we introduced digestion and absorption". "The source innovation can be said to be imported products, and they are all production capacities formed by introduction, digestion, absorption and joint ventures."
The difference is that the production capacity of washing machines, refrigerators, color TVs or laptops and mobile phones is now the first in the world and the forefront of the world. The situation in the chip industry is still far from the world's first.
The basic line of the future development of China's chip industry should be consistent with the "four major pieces and five major parts of the future generation", that is, "in addition to further opening up and further introducing digestion and absorption, we must have our own brand, our own production line, and our own newly developed products".