Comparison of entrepreneurial models of IC design companies at home and abroad
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People who have experience in the semiconductor industry are familiar with the cyclical fluctuations of the semiconductor industry. Although people
are still afraid of the slide they just experienced in 2001, from the government to the company and even the choice of personal career
, people's enthusiasm for the semiconductor industry has not diminished at all, and they look forward to the early arrival of spring after the cold winter. On the one hand,
it is because people generally realize that the integrated circuit industry has not only become one of the key factors affecting people's quality of life in today's increasingly information-based society
, but also the main way for core technology to eventually move towards productization and realize its value.
On the other hand people's expectations for high returns in the integrated circuit industry have not been weakened by the cyclical fluctuations of the industry.
When people talk about the integrated circuit industry, they are always used to emphasizing the investment amount, scale, and process level of the foundry;
the design level of the design company has reached a certain number of microns, the chip integration has reached a certain number of tens of thousands of gates, and there are several overseas returnees
with doctoral and master's degrees in the company; admittedly, these are things that are easy to attract attention in material form. If we were still in the planned economy era,
we would seem to have nothing missing after having these favorable conditions. We would just wait for the chip to come out and pass the appraisal, and then we would be done.
However , whether it is an IC startup company that is used to growing up in overseas market economic conditions and comes to China
to start a business, or an entrepreneurial IC design company incubated in China, the purpose of starting a business in China
is nothing more than being optimistic about China's rapidly growing semiconductor market, especially when the world's overall semiconductor market is declining while China
still maintains a double-digit chip consumption growth.
It is crucial for entrepreneurial IC design companies to analyze and understand the characteristics of the domestic market and formulate a reasonable business model. Otherwise, even if you have good talents and technologies,
you may not be able to share the benefits brought by the rapidly growing domestic market because of unreasonable product direction and business model formulation. The business may
die in the cradle, and complaining about the poor domestic entrepreneurial environment will be useless.
I. Differences in the entrepreneurial models of domestic and foreign IC design companies
I. Entrepreneurial characteristics of overseas IC design companies
Three high characteristics: High design level starting point---deep submicron entry
High technology dominance---mastering core technology
High return and high elimination mechanism---acquisition/listing on the Growth Enterprise Market or
bankruptcy
A. High design level starting point---deep submicron entry
High design level (deep submicron) starting point Usually, they directly cut into the mainstream technology
/process for design, which is the basic feature of overseas IC design startups. Since IC design
startups in developed countries and regions are usually established by elite partners who are leading in a certain technical field and have mastered the core technology Know-How
, such technologies are usually developed ahead of time and are technologies for the mainstream market in the next few years. On the one hand,
the complexity and performance requirements of the technology determine that it cannot be realized with chip design processes that will be outdated in a few years
; on the other hand, Moore's Law of chip process progress determines that the realization
process of products for the mainstream market in the next few years must basically be realized with the current leading process in order to be close to the requirements of the future market for products, and
the sample testing and evaluation of the products will be meaningful.
B. High-tech dominance---Mastering core technology and
having special expertise (Know-How) in the direction of key industrial technology, which is non-repeatable and non-imitable in the short term
, and the target market is the future high-growth market.
As mentioned above, the basic feature of overseas IC design startups is not that a few engineers have certain IC design
capabilities and can develop some IC products, but that entrepreneurial elites are engaged in advanced technology development.
In the process of development
the wisdom and patent results of the entrepreneur. In the short term, it is often difficult for other competitors to imitate or surpass it. The entrepreneur believes that
by starting a business and establishing his own IC design company, he can accelerate the productization process of the technology, thereby gaining
a market advantage that is obvious or even exceeds the development progress of the large company he originally served. By establishing a risk-benefit
sharing mechanism within the startup company, he can ultimately achieve the improvement of personal value.
C. High return and high elimination mechanism - being acquired/merged by a large company, and then listed on the GEM board after packaging to obtain high
returns or bankruptcy
. The word for entrepreneurship in English is "Venture", which refers to a hopeful adventure. Generally speaking, "entrepreneurship" refers to the creation of
an unprecedented business or opportunity. The entrepreneurial environment abroad is indeed very different from that in China. The biggest difference may be that it
is not mainly based on government policies, but on the entrepreneurial return mechanism established under a perfect market system.
There are all kinds of startups and venture capital companies in Silicon Valley. Some entrepreneurs have successfully achieved
the entrepreneurial purpose of entrepreneurship-à growth-à return through entrepreneurship, and the venture capitalists who cooperate with them have also obtained value-added returns; However
, many entrepreneurs fail and eventually close down due to lack of obvious technical advantages or errors in market judgment, and
the investment of related venture capitalists is also wasted. This is why there are so many short-lived companies in Silicon Valley. In
the process of establishing and growing startups, as long as they do not violate the law, the government rarely intervenes or supports them. Co-founders
share future entrepreneurial achievements by sharing internal stock options. The purpose of their entrepreneurship is not to establish a
long-term company of "hundred years" or even "ten years". It is possible that within two or three years, they will gain market recognition through their leading know-how
, win the largest share of a mainstream market in the future, or be acquired by a listed company that urgently needs the core technology
to achieve stock appreciation, or obtain a listing opportunity to achieve high returns, thereby achieving the purpose of their startup company
and completing their mission.
II. Characteristics of Taiwan IC design companies
A. Flagship Foundry plays the core, and design services win the high-end
B. Many stars form a chain, and popular crafts play the leading role
C. Price and service are the magic weapon, and the consumer market makes big money
As one of the IC design centers in the world, Taiwan ranks second only to the United States in terms of IC design capability and scale. We must pay attention to Taiwan,
which will play an active role in the upgrading of the IC industry in mainland China. Taiwan's IC design companies are mainly divided
into two categories: one is the design service companies that work closely with the two major FOUNDRY giants TSMC and UMC, such as Faraday,
Creative, and Keya. They are characterized by high design capabilities and levels, and
provide design services and SIP resources in combination with the advanced technology of the FOUNDRY giants. It can be said that they use mid-to-high-end technology; the other is
the IC design companies that meet the production needs of various IT and consumer electronic products. They are basically market-oriented design companies,
from VIA, which designs and produces PC chipsets, to Sunplus, ELAN
, and Winbond, which design consumer electronics, Holtek, which designs MCUs, and Yuqing Technology, which mainly designs memories. They all
belong to this category. Their product lines cover a wide range, mainly for mid-to-low-end consumer electronic products with huge consumption
. Some of them have in fact become the main suppliers of consumer electronics in mainland China. They have a
more practical and accurate understanding of the mainland market than the large IC design companies in Europe and the United States. Therefore, they have also gained a major market share. Moreover,
they have taken advantage of their cost advantages to further enter the domestic large home appliance market, which has traditionally been the main chip supplier of IC design companies in developed countries
, and seize the market share of the mid-to-high-end part of consumer electronics.
III. Entrepreneurial characteristics of domestic IC design companies
The advantage of Taiwan IC design companies is that they can well fill the gap that foreign chip design companies have no time to pay attention to.
At the same time, in developing countries like China, especially in the field of consumer electronics, the IC market space is widely used. They
have no intention of confronting foreign first-class companies head-on in core chips such as mainstream CPUs, but they have unceremoniously occupied
a large share of consumer ICs such as chipsets and MCUs. Such ICs are often
unable to compete with Taiwan IC design companies in design technology, delivery time and even cost due to the lack of design capabilities and problems in the industrial chain
. The zero distance in culture makes Taiwan IC design companies more advantageous than most foreign large companies in establishing domestic market channels and providing services
, which lays the foundation for their success.
III. Characteristics of domestic IC design companies’ entrepreneurship
: policy support, little risk investment
Low design level starting point, ladder-climbing type entrepreneurship (0.8um, 0.5um, 0.35um...),
cake-cutting type market (low-end product line, price war is inevitable),
entrepreneurship is to do something that others have not done yet.
Policy support is the basic feature of domestic IC design companies sharing the country’s preferential policies for the entire semiconductor industry
, which shows the country’s determination to develop high-tech industries and efforts to create a good incubation environment. It has also become
one of the motivations for attracting many overseas students to return to China to start businesses, which is undoubtedly
very beneficial to promoting the establishment and growth of IC design companies. Compared with the experience of developing high-tech parks in foreign countries or Taiwan, our government’s service function is more prominent
. In addition to the preferential policy support part, it also invests limited start-up funds at the beginning of the establishment of IC design companies (such as in
the form of 100,000 or 200,000 government reward funds).
The model of relying on venture capital to support IC design companies that is popular abroad is not common in China. Even if there is, most of them are injected from the growth stage, and
there are very few cases of injection from the incubation period.
Low starting point of design level In the past two years, in order to promote the rapid development of the IC industry, the domestic government has not only introduced
a series of preferential policies, but also taken relevant measures such as establishing IC design entrepreneurship incubation parks to effectively
support the entrepreneurship of industry-related IC design companies. However, it is not difficult to see that many domestic "entrepreneurship" IC design companies
are very different from IC design startups in developed countries in concept. Due to the long-term backwardness of domestic IC design and the fact that the entire industrial
chain has not yet been organically formed, there are very few talents who have truly had successful IC design and wafer production experience. As long as a newly established
company in China can do some IC design, it is classified as an "entrepreneurship" IC design company, regardless of whether the designed product
has groundbreaking technology or uses advanced process design. Of course, for Chinese companies that rarely designed ICs themselves before,
this is still a big step forward. Although many companies are trying to design chips that do not use advanced processes
, and their products often follow an existing market, ladder-climbing entrepreneurship is a common feature of domestic IC design companies at present
, starting from 0.5um or even larger line width processes, gradually improving the design level, and first reaching the domestic mainstream design level (0
.35um), and then gradually improve to the international mainstream process level (0.25um...).
Cake-cutting market Even domestic IC design companies that have obtained listing qualifications do not
have leading core technologies for the future mainstream market or use today's leading processes like foreign IC design startups. They
are still basically following an existing market and cutting a piece of it to become the company's market share.
Most will follow this model. Therefore, when some domestic companies set up chip design projects,
they are more likely to consider the design capabilities based on existing human resources, rather than market demand
. For example, taking MCU 8051 as an example, although mature general-purpose chips have flooded the market and the price is very cheap,
there are still many IC design companies that develop it as the main chip. As for who they will sell it to after development, and whether the price is
competitive, it is not clear, because relatively speaking, the architecture of 8051 is clear and easy to implement, so they first make a chip
to show the company's design capabilities. This practice is not actually a "startup" IC design company under the market economy
. In fact, if you extend your thinking, you can see that applications based on MCUs such as 8051
are common in consumer electronic products, but currently they may be implemented with several chips, which are easy to imitate and take up a lot of space. In
addition, perhaps by improving the integration level
, the technology is not much more complicated, and there may be room for cost reduction. If such an ASIC is developed,
it can avoid the price war with pure 8051 MCUs in the market and have its own living space.
IC design companies based on this idea are different from the former and are already "startup" IC design companies.
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