At present, artificial intelligence continues to explode in the world, and all links of the industrial chain have ushered in a rise in volume and price. The AI basic layer is data and computing power, and the core industry of computing power includes providing computing and service capabilities in the form of software and hardware, including chips, servers, switches, routers, optical modules, etc. in the traditional IT industry, as well as emerging software and hardware such as artificial intelligence chips, heterogeneous processors, Internet of Things, edge computing, etc. #人工智能 #
According to People's Network, at present, the state has launched the construction of national computing power hub nodes in 8 places, and planned 10 national data center clusters to coordinate the balanced development of regions. According to Zhixi data, as of February 2022, at least 26 cities across the country are promoting or just completing the construction of local intelligent computing centers, of which at least 6 cities such as Hefei, Qingyang, Dalian, Shenyang, Shenzhen and Changsha have announced the start of construction.
According to IDC, the scale of intelligent computing power will reach 1271.4EFLOPS by 2026, with a future CAGR of 52.3%, and a CAGR of 18.5% in the same period. #算力 #
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Data Center
As the physical bearer of computing power, the value of industry empowerment gradually emerges as a new productivity, providing basic power for the digital transformation of enterprises.
According to the statistics of standard rack 2.5kW, as of the end of 2022, the total size of data center racks in use in Continental exceeded 6.5 million, of which the scale of racks of large data centers grew faster, according to the statistics of standard rack 2.5kW, it is expected that the rack size will be 5.4 million in 2022, accounting for more than 80%.
Line check | Industry Research Database Data shows that the upstream of the data center industry mainly provides the necessary infrastructure or conditions for data center construction, in which equipment vendors provide infrastructure and ICT equipment, respectively, underlying infrastructure (power supply and distribution system, cooling and cooling system, etc.) and IT and network equipment (switches, servers, storage), while software service providers provide data center management systems (dynamic environment monitoring systems, data center infrastructure management systems, etc.).
Midstream is a core player in the data center industry, mainly including service providers, including telecom operators, third-party neutral data center service providers, cloud computing vendors, and new entrants from various industries.
The downstream of the industry is mainly the users of data centers, mainly cloud computing enterprises, Internet enterprises and other industry users (including: financial institutions, governments, power enterprise users, etc.). #服务器 #
Data Center and Representative Vendors:
Source: China Academy of Information and Communications Technology
AI chips
From the perspective of technical architecture, chips currently have GPU, NPU, TPU, FPGA and other products that are more suitable for AI, and the chip manufacturing process has also come to 3nm, which is the core of the entire computing power.
Among them, GPUs and FPGAs are relatively mature chip architectures in the early stage, which belong to general-purpose chips.
ASICs are chips customized for specific scenarios of AI. In addition, the central processing unit (CPU) is the computing and control core of the computer, the final execution unit of information processing and program operation, and the core component of the computer.
From the perspective of the global market pattern, the current GPU industry is NVIDIA, Intel and AMD trioligarchic pattern.
At present, in the domestic secondary market, the layout of GPU chips is mainly Cambrian, Haiguang Information, Jingjiawei and other companies, while the domestic primary market has also emerged many start-up companies that launch high-quality GPUs, considering that the GPU market competition is relatively fierce, the future in the context of the significant increase in computing power demand is expected to provide GPU products that meet the actual demand and create performance manufacturers worthy of attention.
The domestic replacement process of GPUs cannot be delayed, and in the context of the tense situation, domestic excellent manufacturers are expected to promote the domestic replacement process of high-end GPUs in the future. #芯片 #
Domestic GPU industry chain:
FPGA is an integrated circuit chip with the biggest feature being field programmability.
From the perspective of the global market pattern, overseas manufacturers dominate the global FPGA market, Xilinx and Intel form a double monopoly, and domestic companies continue to increase the layout of FPGA chips, with huge room for growth.
Domestic FPGA head manufacturers include Fudan Microelectronics (leading high-reliability FPGA technology, the first to launch 100 million-gate FPGA and PSoC chips, with continuously enriched application fields) and Unigroup Guowei (a leader in the domestic special integrated circuit industry, with products covering more than 500 varieties, and FPGAs in special fields continue to be updated), Anlu Technology (a domestic civil FPGA leader).
ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) is an integrated circuit that is specifically designed and manufactured according to the needs of the product, and can be optimized at the hardware level in a more targeted manner.
At present, the mainstream ASICs on the market include TPU chips, NPU chips, VPU chips and BPU chips, which are designed and produced by Google, Cambrian, Intel and Horizon respectively.
Source: Google, Pingtou Ge, Cambrian, Huawei HiSilicon official website, Guosen Securities
server
At present, the demand for AI servers in artificial intelligence scenarios is growing rapidly, and computing power plays an important role in model training, inference speed, and data processing.
The upstream of the server industry chain includes chips, PCBs, DRAM memory and modules, power supplies, HDD/SSD, heat dissipation, interconnection interfaces, network cards, etc., the midstream is mainly motherboard/system integrators, server brand operators, and the downstream is the Internet, cloud computing service providers, operators, enterprise customers, etc.
Global server industry chain and representative manufacturers:
Source: China Merchants Securities
According to the "China Server Market Tracker Report for the Fourth Quarter of 2022" released by IDC, the first two waves and New H3C have changed less, and the third is Super Fusion, which jumped from 3.2% to 10.1%, an increase far exceeding other server vendors. Among the top 8 server manufacturers, Inspur, Dell, and Lenovo have all experienced significant declines, while Superfusion and ZTE have achieved significant growth. Among them, the share of the wave decreased from 30.8% to 28.1%; New H3C's share decreased from 17.5% to 17.2%; ZTE increased from 3.1% to 5.3%, ranking fifth in China. Lenovo saw the most pronounced decline, from 7.5% to 4.9%.
TrendForce Consulting expects AI server shipments to increase by up to 8% year-on-year in 2023; The compound growth rate will reach 10.8% from 2022 to 2026. According to IDC data, the global AI server market size may grow from $15.6 billion to $31.8 billion from 2021 to 2025 at a CAGR of 19.5%.
Optical transceiver
Optical modules are key components of data centers and one of the key links of computing power.
Optical module is one of the important components of optical fiber communication equipment, is the most critical component of optical communication equipment, the main role is to achieve photoelectric conversion. An optical module is usually composed of optical transmitting device (TOSA), optical receiving device (ROSA), laser chip (LDChip), optical detector chip (PD chip), circuit board (PCBA), optical fiber interface, electrical interface and other parts. Optical modules have a wealth of application scenarios, divided into telecom market and data communication market, including telecommunications, data broadband, FTTx, data center and other fields, in recent years, the data communication market has gradually become the main segment driving the growth of the optical module market.
The internal composition of the optical module:
Source: FiberMall
According to LightCounting's calculations, the optical module market will grow by 17%, 10% and 14% respectively from 2020 to 2022. However, growth is expected to slow to 4% in 2023 and then recover in 2024-2025, with the global optical module market CAGR of 11% from 2022 to 2027. Although the growth rate may be weak in 2023, global optical module sales are expected to reach $20 billion in 2027.
Global Optical Transceiver Sales by Market Segment:
Over the past decade, Continental optical component and module suppliers have gradually gained share in the global market, and Continental suppliers currently dominate the global Ethernet optical module market. In addition, in smaller market segments such as FTTx and wireless fronthaul, almost all of them are Chinese suppliers. Due to the inability to compete with Chinese suppliers, many non-Chinese suppliers have successively withdrawn from the optical module market.
According to LightCounting's calculations, the world's top five cloud vendors, Alibaba, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, will spend more than $3 billion on Ethernet optical modules in 2026. 800G optical modules will dominate this segment from the end of 2025. In addition, Google plans to start deploying 1.6T modules in 2-3 years. CPO (Common Packaged Optics) will begin replacing pluggable optical modules in cloud data centers in 2024-2026.
High-rate optical module shipments are expected to increase significantly, and optical modules may meet a new cycle of 800G upgrades. The driving force for the growth of 800G optical module products comes from the increase in traffic data brought by AI-related applications, the high demand for bandwidth in data centers, and the technical iteration of optical module manufacturers. In 2023, 800G optical modules are expected to open the first year of mass production, 800G product upgrade cycle, and the technical route of leading manufacturers is unified, and the industry may usher in an upward inflection point in performance in the past two years.
According to Lightcounting's statistics, the domestic manufacturers shortlisted in the global Top10 in 2022 are Zhongji Xuchuang (second), Guangxun Technology (eighth), Xinyisheng (seventh) and Huagong Zhengyuan (tenth), and the top four domestic optical module manufacturers occupy 26% of the global market share.
At present, domestic manufacturers are accelerating the layout of 400G/800G optical modules, Guangxun Technology, Zhongji Xuchuang, Xinyisheng, and Cambridge Technology have mass-produced 800G optical module products, and other manufacturers are also accelerating the progress of research and development.
The domestic industry leader is in a leading position in the 800G introduction competition and is expected to take the lead in mass production.
PCB
With the vigorous development and wide application of AI technology, the demand for high-performance computing capability chips is unprecedentedly strong, driving the overall performance of servers to improve, and PCB boards in the server field are developing at high speed and high frequency. The PCIe protocol upgrade promotes the upgrade of server PCB materials, increases process difficulty, and increases value.
At the end of enterprise expansion, high-end PCB board expansion plans are frequent. Especially for IC carrier boards, leading IC carrier board companies such as Xinxing Electronics, Yifei Electric, Shin Kong, Kyocera, Samsung Motor, LG, Xintai, Dade Electronics and other IC carrier board companies have announced the expansion of production, and are expected to release production capacity in 2023-2024. #5月财经新势力 #
Domestic leading enterprises such as Shennan Circuit, Zhuhai Yueya and Xingsen Technology continue to expand IC carrier board production capacity, and are expected to release production capacity from 2023 to 2025.
Source: PCB industry integration new media WeChat public account, company announcements, Xinyuan Micro Decoration, Everbright Securities
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