preface
In 2023, the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference opened in Beijing, and a total of 26 representatives of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference involved in chip semiconductors participated in the proposals, among which new energy vehicles and power batteries are emerging industries, and related proposals have attracted much attention.
"Core" kinetic energy, get rid of the stuck neck dilemma
Feng Xingya, deputy to the National People's Congress and general manager of GAC Group, proposed that to improve the application rate of domestic chips, first, it is necessary to accelerate and guide industrial transformation from the policy level, promote the research and development and application of "stuck neck" and high-end chips, and at the same time increase policy stimulus, and study and introduce incentive measures for the whole industry chain of domestic chips in many aspects such as chip research and development, application and automobile consumption; The second is to accelerate the improvement of supporting measures for automotive chips, improve the application guarantee mechanism for automotive chips, and improve technical specifications and testing standards in subdivided fields to improve the application rate of automotive chips. In addition, Feng Xingya also put forward six suggestions such as automobile consumption and new energy vehicle battery replacement.
The chip shortage has always been a topic of great concern in the automotive industry, and although many experts and scholars have proposed a variety of solutions, they have not been fully solved so far. So, what role do chips have for the automotive industry?
Definition and classification of automotive chips
A car chip is an integrated circuit that can be installed on a car and includes almost all parts of the car. It is the key to the competition in the automotive industry, which can be divided into control (MCU and AI chips), power (DC/AC chips), analog chips (such as CMOS, MLCC), sensors and others (such as memory).
▲Source: China Business Industry Research Institute
The automotive chip market is growing steadily
In recent years, the production and sales of automobiles in mainland China have continued to grow, and the demand for automotive chips has been increasing, making the market scale of automotive chips expand rapidly. According to the data, the size of the mainland automotive chip market was only 11.14 billion US dollars in 2018, and reached 15.01 billion US dollars in 2021, with an average annual growth rate of 10.4%. The automotive chip market is expected to grow to $17.2 billion by 2023.
Automotive chips play an important role in the process of realizing automotive intelligence and electrification, so the global automotive chip market is showing a growth trend. However, due to the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the global automotive chip market has declined to a certain extent in 2020. According to data, the global automotive chip industry market size reached $49.85 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $57.48 billion in 2023.
"Core" link, accelerate the development of automotive chips
Automotive chips are the foundation of the electronics industry and an important symbol to measure a country's scientific and technological innovation and technological strength. With the continuous development of intelligent, networked and shared trends, higher requirements are put forward for the performance and function of chips. According to data from CCID Consulting, the size of the mainland automotive chip market in 2020 will be about 28.68 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.8%.
Source: Freepik
Automotive chip industry chain & status quo analysis
In terms of the industrial chain, the upstream of semiconductors is mainly equipment, materials and software, the midstream is the manufacturing layer, including chip design, production, packaging and testing, and the downstream is application. Chip design enterprises are responsible for wafer production by researching and designing integrated circuit systems, logic, circuits and performance, transforming them into physical design layouts; Chip manufacturers are responsible for wafer manufacturing, using photomasks to make circuit graphics and present them on wafers; Chip packaging enterprises will process the finished wafer cutting, sealing and packaging to form chip products; Chip testing companies test the reliability and stability of chips.
At present, the mainland automotive chip industry is mainly concentrated in IDM companies, and its sales account for a relatively large proportion. From the perspective of regional distribution, the Yangtze River Delta region enterprises mainly in China are mainly centered on Shanghai, such as Shanghai Xinkai Semiconductor Co., Ltd., Xinqing Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., etc.; In addition, enterprises in Qingdao, Chongqing, Guangzhou and other regions of Shandong are also actively deploying automotive chip-related businesses.
The "chip shortage" continues to spread, mainly for three reasons: the first is that as the epidemic is gradually controlled, the global supply of automotive chips is tightening; The second aspect is the rapid development of the global new energy vehicle market, and the demand for chip production capacity is growing rapidly; The third aspect is that related application fields such as intelligent network connection have increasingly higher requirements for chip performance. In the face of the severe situation of the global semiconductor industry, the mainland should seize the key nodes of the automotive semiconductor industry chain and accelerate the realization of independent control.
Source: Freepik
The two sessions focused on the development of new energy vehicles
At present, with the accelerated evolution of a new round of global scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, the new energy vehicle industry has also become one of the important directions for the high-quality development of the mainland manufacturing industry, and its status in the global automotive industry chain will be further enhanced in the future. Especially with the development of intelligent, connected and electrified technologies, Continental has also achieved technological breakthroughs and industrialization breakthroughs in this field.
At the two sessions, as a representative of new energy vehicles, Wang Fengying, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and president of Great Wall Motor, has been paying attention to the development of the new energy vehicle industry. As a model of "China Chip" independent and controllable, Great Wall Motor is one of the important forces in the development of Chinese brand automobiles, and is also a pioneer in the independent innovation of mainland China and the rise of national automobile brands.
At this conference, Wang Fengying put forward two proposals, "On Promoting Domestic Chips to Better Serve the New Energy Vehicle Industry" and "Suggestions on Further Supporting the High-quality Development of Chinese Brands and Promoting the Localization Process of the New Energy Vehicle Industry Chain", emphasizing that it is necessary to strengthen the importance of the development and independent control of the whole chip industry chain in China, focus on key areas, and strengthen the innovation capacity building of the semiconductor industry; Increase the research of key core technologies and vigorously cultivate the domestic chip industry ecology; Continue to optimize the policy environment in key areas of the country, accelerate the completion of chip shortcomings in key areas, and promote the mature application of domestic chip products; Taking scenario application as the traction, it realizes the deep integration of chip and automobile manufacturing; Strengthen the construction of new infrastructure and effectively reduce the cost of R&D, production and manufacturing of key core technologies; Strengthen industrial coordination and international cooperation in key regions, and improve the stability and competitiveness of the industrial chain and supply chain.
Wang Fengying also proposed to make every effort to overcome the "stuck neck" technology of automotive chips. Chips are the core infrastructure supporting the intelligent, connected and electrified automobiles, and are an important link in the localization process of the new energy vehicle industry chain.
Localization is only 2%, MCU low-price competition risk
Although China's automotive industry has achieved rapid development, it also faces some problems, such as heavy dependence on imports, obvious gap between automotive chip design capabilities and foreign companies, and lack of core technology. The data shows that the market share of automotive MCUs in mainland China is small, and from the perspective of the self-sufficiency rate of domestic MCUs, in 2020, the self-sufficiency rate of domestic automotive MCUs will only be 2%. According to reports, MCU (microcontroller) is one of the core basic electronic components in automotive electronics technology and is used in automotive ECU (electronic control unit). At present, MCUs in the domestic market are mainly from foreign manufacturers such as Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, NXP, Renesas, and Infineon. It is mainly used in the field of intelligent cockpit and autonomous driving, with a market share of 44% and 15% in China, respectively.
▲Source: Touleo Research Institute
IGBT production capacity is king, and domestic substitution process is the fastest
With the rapid development of new energy vehicles and 5G base station construction, the market size of the mainland IGBT industry has increased from 670 million US dollars in 2016 to 1.5 billion US dollars in 2019, and is expected to reach 2.37 billion US dollars in 2023, but it is monopolized by European and American countries, Japan and South Korea, and the top four manufacturers account for more than 60% of the global market share, and domestic manufacturers mainly include BYD Semiconductor, Infineon, China Resources Micro and so on. As there is still a gap in the overall technical level of IGBT in the mainland, Infineon, the world's largest production capacity, for example, has factories and equipment accounting for nearly half of the global production capacity, but it still needs to continuously improve the technical level.
▲Source: Prospective Industry Research Institute
How to break the lack of core and less electricity, in addition to improving the upstream and downstream cooperation mechanism of the industrial chain, chip companies also need to develop collaboratively. Promote domestic chips on the car as soon as possible to ensure domestic automotive chip production capacity, the automotive chip industry ushered in a period of development opportunities, and there is broad space for domestic substitution. To this end, it is necessary to establish a sound upstream and downstream cooperation mechanism of the industrial chain as soon as possible, enhance the overall competitiveness of the industrial chain, achieve domestic substitution, and ensure domestic automotive chip production capacity.
"Core" opportunities, to achieve domestic substitution
Compared with consumer-grade chips, automotive chips have the characteristics of high reliability and high stability, which is a symbol of their high technical barrier industry. As a technology-intensive industry, the chip industry has high technical thresholds for upstream design and materials, equipment, midstream manufacturing and packaging and testing, and has long been dominated by monopolizing the competitive market.
Automotive chip packaging forms cover the current semiconductor packaging forms, including TO (traditional wire-tied packaging), TSSOP (thin outline package), QFN (quad leadless flat package), QFP (quad lead flat package), BGA (ball grid array package) and LGA (contact array package), etc., as well as eWLB (fan-out wafer-level packaging), CSP (chip size level packaging), PiP (stacked packaging), PoP (Stacked Packaging) and fcBGA (Flip Chip Package), etc.
With the popularization of AI and intelligent driving technology, higher requirements are put forward for chip and packaging technology, and modular packaging forms have become more diverse. According to industry insiders, "There will be more and more technology trends in the future, such as WLP (wafer-in-package), SiP (system-in-package), AiP (system-in-package), fcBGA (ball grid array) and Smart IPM (intelligent packaging technology). ”
▲ SOURCE: TENSUN
As one of the special equipment manufacturers in the back-end packaging and testing process, Tensun Tengsheng has a new generation of products - JIG SAW sorting machine FDS3200 can quickly cut and sort QFN, BGA, LGA and other products cut and shaped, scan code to detect and place plates, and load and unload transmission is more flexible, which is convenient for technicians to carry out daily material transportation. At the same time, the equipment also solves the problem of high sorting misjudgment rate and misoperation of parts caused by misoperation during palletizing after sorting. The FDS3200 aims to improve cutting accuracy and faster handling, not only to improve production efficiency, but also to quickly respond to trends such as product miniaturization and large-scale substrates.
As electronic products continue to develop in the direction of "light, thin, short and small", the overall requirements for organic packaging substrates can be summarized by "dense, thin, flat", and "dense" as the leading or core and rapidly developing. This necessarily involves a variety of fine process technologies. Tengsheng Precision JIG SAW can effectively help customers improve production efficiency and yield rate, which is more suitable for leading semiconductor packaging and testing manufacturers.
Disclaimer: Some of the reference sources for this article are:
1. "Domestic mobile phone shipments fell 34.1% year-on-year in November, with strong demand for industrial and automotive semiconductors", source: January 9, 2023 Guosen Securities
2. "Enabling the rapid development of new energy vehicles, global demand resonates upward", source: Dongguan Securities
3. "The Localization Trend of Semiconductor Cutting and Throwing Materials from the Development of International Giant DISCO", source: Huachuang Securities
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