Zeng Xuezhong talks about Unisoc: Becoming a world-class Fabless company within 10 years

Latest update time：2018-04-11

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Zeng Xuezhong has not appeared in the media for a year since he joined Tsinghua Unigroup as global executive vice president in April last year, but the discussion surrounding this communications industry star has never stopped. Not only because in the past 300 days, he has added another title in front of his name: CEO of Tsinghua Unigroup, but also because of the mission and burden behind this title.

Zeng Xuezhong, CEO of Unisoc

At CITE 2018 which opened recently, Zeng Xuezhong, global executive vice president of Tsinghua Unigroup and CEO of Unisoc, accepted an exclusive interview with the media and publicly shared for the first time some of his thoughts since taking over Unisoc, as well as the company's strategies, plans and directions.

The role change from communication to chips

Before joining Tsinghua Unigroup, Zeng Xuezhong worked at ZTE for 21 years, serving as an engineer, executive vice president, and CEO of ZTE Terminal. His new role as CEO of Tsinghua Unigroup Spreadtrum is equivalent to a direct change from a customer to a supplier. Faced with this role change, Zeng Xuezhong said that this is another time to be on the cusp of the trend.

He said that the more than 20 years he has worked at ZTE was the golden age of China's communications industry. Both Huawei and ZTE grew up during this period and have become world-class companies. However, after years of development, the communications industry is relatively stable. In the next 20 to 30 years, the semiconductor industry will be in a new golden cycle, and it will also be a great era. This is also the reason why Zeng Xuezhong came to Unisoc and took charge of Unisoc.

"My work experience in the communications industry over the past twenty years will also help me in my new job," Zeng Xuezhong told a reporter from Semiconductor Industry Observer.

According to Zeng Xuezhong, his previous work at ZTE was equivalent to being a customer of chip manufacturers. As a downstream company, he understood the needs and ideas of the terminals, and based on this, he could make good plans for the chips. His current work is to accurately plan what chips Unisoc needs to make, what kind of processes it needs, and even have a clearer understanding of who to cooperate with. For example, the cooperation with Huawei is a typical example.

"We respect Huawei HiSilicon because they do a great job in R&D. For this reason, we have signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Huawei to comprehensively learn HiSilicon's technical direction and strengthen communication with them. The cooperation between the two parties can bring out the advantages of Spreadtrum to the fullest," said Zeng Xuezhong.

Zeng Xuezhong said that his visit to Tsinghua Unigroup was to undertake the country’s mission, because this is a national strategy and mission.

This is just as he said when he first came to Spreadtrum: the mission is glorious, the responsibility is heavy, and the pressure is enormous.

Unisoc's three major strategies

Unisoc was formed by the merger of Spreadtrum and RDA Microelectronics. The former is the leading AP supplier in China, and the latter is the leading RF supplier in China. After the full integration in early January this year, the new Unisoc combined the technological advantages of both parties to become a leading pan-chip solution provider.

Zeng Xuezhong said that Unisoc's goal is not only to be a mobile chip supplier, but also to provide TV chips, IoT, automotive electronics, Bluetooth and peripheral RF devices. Zeng Xuezhong emphasized that becoming a world-class pan-chip design giant is the ultimate goal of Unisoc.

At present, Unisoc is now a chip design company with 4,500 employees and annual revenue of more than 10 billion yuan, ranking first in China and third in the world (after Qualcomm and MediaTek). In the latest data released by ICinsights, Unisoc is also ranked ninth in the world's fabless companies, the only company in China to be selected except HiSilicon. Various data prove that Unisoc has already made a name for itself in the chip world.

The world's top ten Fabless in 2017

At CITE 2018, Unisoc also exhibited Unisoc SC9850KH, the first mobile phone chip platform in China and the second in the world with independent embedded CPU key technology. It is reported that this is an architecture that has been redesigned with the authorization of the Arm instruction set, rather than directly using the official Arm Cortex-A series chips. Even MediaTek has not done this.

Although Unisoc is gradually expanding its influence and narrowing the gap with the second place, it must be admitted that the gap between Unisoc and leaders such as Qualcomm is still very obvious. In order to better catch up with them and become world-class, Zeng Xuezhong brought three major strategic layouts to Unisoc:

First, consolidate the low-end; there is no doubt that Unisoc has an absolute advantage in low-end chip products. Consolidating the low-end product line can not only help them consolidate the existing market, but also strengthen the technical foundation.

Second, steadily move into the mid-to-high-end market. According to Zeng Xuezhong, if Spreadtrum wants to become one of the best chip manufacturers in the world, then moving into the mid-to-high-end market is the only way forward. However, he also emphasized that this requires a process and the pace should not be too fast.

Third, 5G changes the landscape; 5G is now a hot topic in the communications industry. This is an opportunity for China and also an opportunity for Unisoc. Zeng Xuezhong believes that Unisoc can achieve overtaking in parallel lanes or straight lanes.

Zeng Xuezhong emphasized that in order to achieve the above goals, he set a goal for Unisoc to build core competitiveness and compete with the world's top companies, which requires an excellent team. And an excellent team needs to be achieved by cultivating excellent young talents from within and introducing excellent talents from outside. He hopes to use the merger of Spreadtrum and RDA to reconstruct a new organization with greater power and potential.

5G chips are the key to overtaking

From Zeng Xuezhong's introduction, we know that 5G will be an important step in Unisoc's strategy. As he said, this is an important bargaining chip for them to overtake others and become a world-class chip manufacturer. In order to achieve this goal, Unisoc has adopted a two-step strategy of independent innovation and international cooperation based on the characteristics of its own chips: on the one hand, Unisoc will work with Intel on 5G;

At MWC 2018, Unisoc announced a global strategic partnership with Intel on 5G. The two parties plan to jointly develop a new 5G smartphone platform equipped with Intel's 5G modem for the Chinese market, and plan to launch it in 2019 in sync with the deployment of 5G mobile networks. We learned from Zeng Xuezhong that this will be a path for Unisoc's high-end 5G products.

"From Spreadtrum to Unisoc, we have always had a good advantage in APs; and Intel's performance in modems in recent years has also been excellent. Cooperation with Intel is a common goal of both parties. We hope to turn the accumulation of both parties over the years into chips under the mainstream architecture and provide them to our mobile phone partners and consumers." Zeng Xuezhong told the reporter of Semiconductor Industry Observer.

On the other hand, Unisoc will also independently develop 5G Modem.

Zeng Xuezhong said that from 2G, 3G, and 4G, Unisoc has performed well in modems. Looking forward to 5G, they will continue to invest in it and will definitely achieve good results. The 5G Modem independently developed by Unisoc will also be officially launched in 2020. In order to complete everything on time, Unisoc has assembled a team of hundreds of engineers to develop its own 5G modem.

Earlier, Unisoc launched the 5G terminal prototype pilot-v2, which has been verified in the second phase of the China 5G Technology R&D Test organized by the China IMT-2020 Promotion Organization, and successfully completed the interoperability test with Huawei's 5G prototype. The third phase is also underway.

Unisoc's 5G terminal prototype pilot-v2

2020 will be the year of the entire 5G explosion. The network has been basically built, and many partners have very high expectations for 5G chips and operators. The research and development of our products can accelerate this process, Zeng Xuezhong added.

Now, he hopes to work with the new team of Spreadtrum to seize the golden opportunity of 5G in the future, rely on China's huge market opportunities, rely on the group, and rely on Intel's strategic partners. In 5-8 years, they can move to the next level and become the global leader in 5G pan-chips and one of the top giants in the industry.

As for the currently popular artificial intelligence, when asked about the relevant layout, Zeng Xuezhong said that Unisoc is planning a major cooperation, but the timing is not yet ripe and it will be announced to everyone when the time comes.

The domestic phenomenon of "lack of chips and screens" has always been a pain in the hearts of the media and major practitioners. After years of hard work, the problem of "lack of screens" has been solved by Chinese engineers and decision makers. Only the "lack of chips" is left to spur every Chinese semiconductor person. Especially with the recent information that China's chip imports have exceeded oil, it has become a top-down consensus to vigorously develop China's independent chip industry. This is not only a problem of self-control, but more importantly, the industrial value driven by the chips.

According to the industry, the impact of chips on the industry is 1:100, which means that a chip worth one yuan will leverage the value of the industry by one hundred yuan. That means that the current sales of tens of billions of yuan of Unisoc have driven the market's production capacity of one trillion yuan. With the development of Unisoc, this impact will continue to expand.

Of course, judging from the current competitive landscape, Qualcomm's leading position is still unshakable, and MediaTek is also accelerating its transformation. For Spreadtrum, the road to challenge is still arduous. Can they take every step as they wish? Let's wait and see.

By Li Shoupeng, Semiconductor Industry Observer

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