Today, China's chip imports have not only reduced chip imports year after year, but also entered a new height in the independent research and development of domestic chips.
In recent days, Huawei has been enjoying good news in terms of chips, announcing that it has basically realized the localization of EDA tools above 14nm chips, and has completed the replacement of 13,000 components.
Now it seems that the excessive blockade of the United States will only accelerate China's research and development, not only will not have the effect of containment, but will make Europe and the United States lose the advantage of chip semiconductors.
What is even more unexpected in the United States is that today's China has begun to blow the clarion call of "counterattack", and many domestic factories have embarked on the road of "de-beautification", such as Tencent Ali have successively announced progress in chip research and development.
Nowadays, in the field of chips, it has become a consensus that China has independent and controllable capabilities, and China is expected to achieve independent control of the entire industrial chain from chip manufacturing to chip application.
Three years to sharpen a sword, Huawei from cultivation to harvest
On March 24, Huawei held a hardware and software tool pledge conference, and Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun said that Huawei's chip design EDA tool team and EDA companies in the United Nations have jointly created EDA tools required for processes above 14nm, basically realizing the localization of EDA tools above 14nm, and will complete their comprehensive verification in 2023.
Xu Zhijun introduced that over the past three years, Huawei has replaced 78 software/hardware development tools in three R&D production lines, including hardware development, software development, and chip development, ensuring the continuity of R&D operations.
Xu Zhijun said that Huawei's software development tool development team has been laying out since 2018, focusing on three R&D production lines of hardware development, software development, and chip development, striving to build a complete set of tool chains for software from coding, compilation, testing, security, build, release to deployment, etc., adopting the strategy of self-research and joint research and development with partners to solve the problem of tool continuity, and has completed the replacement of 78 software/hardware development tools to ensure the continuity of R&D operations.
EDA itself is extremely complex, and the realization of EDA tool autonomy can basically achieve the prerequisites for semiconductor autonomy.
In terms of hardware development tools, Huawei has broken through the "root technology", introduced new architectures, released cloud-native schematic tools, created high-speed and high-density PCB layout tools, polished 2D/3D CAD tools for structural design, and laid out hardware multidisciplinary simulation tools. At present, mainland EDA tool manufacturers are striving to achieve full-process tools, only by realizing the whole process, can we completely get rid of the passive situation, I believe that there will be a major breakthrough in local EDA in the next two years.
Since the United States put Huawei on the Entity List on May 16, 2019, all US products, chips, devices and services cannot be provided to Huawei without permission. As we all know, because Huawei was cut off, TSMC could not continue to OEM Huawei, and Huawei could only rely on the previous stock chips to continue to support.
Because of this, Huawei's mobile phone business has encountered great obstacles, and annual mobile phone sales have decreased by hundreds of millions of units. Lao Mei relies on its advantages in the chip field to constantly suppress Huawei, hoping that Huawei can admit defeat and compromise.
The problems faced by Huawei are a microcosm of domestic software. According to incomplete statistics, more than 600 Chinese companies and institutions have been included in the so-called "entity list" of the United States.
The country is in trouble, and the husband is responsible. At that time, Huawei had already provoked a large number of national salvation and embarked on an independent technology research and development road.
BAT charges ahead, teaming up to conquer the neck technique
Since December last year, Huawei has released 11 software and hardware development tools and services in a row, and Huawei's own product line research and development has switched to its own tools.
Xu Zhijun, Chairman of Huawei: "Huawei's slogan of building leading product development tools from sand and ore to products, completely getting rid of its dependence on Western product development tools, breaking through the Wujiang natural danger, and achieving strategic breakthrough has been sounded." ”
In the past two years, the United States' technological suppression measures against China have been particularly intensive, and the impact on domestic enterprises has been multi-faceted, regardless of whether the behavior of the United States is "killing the enemy 1,000 and self-harming 800", the mainland must tighten the clockwork to invest more and run faster on the road of technological autonomy, and solve the "stuck neck" problem one by one.
Since April 2018, Science and Technology Daily has successively reported on 35 key technologies that the mainland has not mastered at that time, which is what we call China's "stuck neck" technology. Among them, there are 6 hardware technologies involving semiconductors: lithography machines, chips, photoresists, ITO targets, ultra-precision polishing processes, and mobile phone RF devices.
Looking back four years later, more than half of the technologies have been domestically self-developed, breaking the situation of long-term monopoly by foreign countries.
In just 4 years, the number of "stuck neck" technologies broken is enough to show that the momentum of accelerating the catch-up of mainland domestic substitution is getting stronger and stronger, especially in the field of chips.
Chip R&D is a complex system engineering. To achieve complete autonomy and control, self-developed CPUs, software ecology based on autonomous command systems, and production processes based on independent material equipment are indispensable. It can be imagined that the development of a command system from scratch is destined to be a competition of time and endurance, and countless people's hard work and sweat are condensed behind it.
Specifically, the embodiment of local companies lies in the continuous research and development of AI chips by Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.
In 2018, it happened to be a critical node for the domestic chip industry to heat up. This year, the US sanctions against ZTE sounded the alarm for domestic technology companies, and Internet giants, entrepreneurs, and investors took action at the same time: in July, Baidu released a cloud-based full-function AI chip "Kunlun"; In August, Tencent led the pre-A round of Shanghai Fengyuan Technology Co., Ltd., which is mainly engaged in AI chips; In September, Alibaba announced the establishment of Pingtou Ge Semiconductor Co., Ltd. at the Yunqi Conference.
Compared with Baidu, Alibaba and the investment were earlier, as early as November 2016, the two led the programmable chip company Barefoot Networks $23 million Series C financing.
In addition, Ali has also invested in unicorn Cambrian, Shenjian Technology, Kneron, Aojie Technology (ASR) and other chip companies, which is the largest investment in BAT.
Overall, BAT's approach to the semiconductor industry varies. Baidu adopts more alliances and independent research and development; In addition to independent research and development, Alibaba has invested in a number of start-up chip companies; Tencent, on the other hand, has clearly limited investment and is spending more energy on software.
Today's China has the institutional advantage of concentrating on big things, has the advantage of ultra-large-scale market and domestic demand, and has the world's largest R&D team... These will converge into a powerful energy to continuously break through key core technologies. By setting goals and overcoming difficulties, we will certainly be able to firmly grasp the initiative of innovation and development in our own hands and write a new chapter of more magnificent scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement.