Ni Guangnan talks about the breakthrough of "China Chip"

"Lack of core components" is a major problem in the development of China's information industry. The successive chip supply cuts faced by ZTE and Huawei from the United States have further highlighted this problem, attracting widespread attention from the national and international communities.

While people are condemning the US trade bullying, they are also concerned about China's chip technology and industry: What is the current status and level of development? What is the biggest bottleneck it is facing? How can it break through and achieve self-reliance?

Regarding these issues, our newspaper’s WeChat public account "Xia Ke Dao" recently interviewed Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Xiakedao: Some people say that no matter how many publicity reports on promoting innovation, they are not as profound and effective as the warnings from the "ZTE incident" and the "Huawei incident". What do you think of these two incidents?

Ni Guangnan: Chip technology is the commanding height of modern information technology, and the chip industry is a classic of modern micro-processing manufacturing. The development level of chip technology and the chip industry is related to the country's competitiveness and information security.

Before the "ZTE incident" and "Huawei incident" occurred, many people thought that chips were just like ordinary electronic components, and they could be bought directly from the market. These two incidents taught us a lesson, telling us the extremely important value of chip technology and the chip industry, and formed a situation in which the whole nation spontaneously cares about the development of China's chip technology and the progress of the chip industry. In this sense, the above incidents are a "wake-up call" for the whole nation, and have a positive side.

Xiakedao: After years of development, what is the current level and strength of China's chip technology and industry? How big is the gap compared with the United States? In what specific aspects is it reflected?

Ni Guangnan: China has made rapid progress in chip design. It can be said that it has ranked second in the world, second only to the United States. It not only has the largest number of design companies in the world, but also has reached a very high level and has designed a number of excellent products. For example, the chip used in the "Sunway TaihuLight" supercomputer, which has been ranked first in the world for several consecutive years, was designed by a Chinese company. For another example, mobile phone chips and server chips designed by Chinese companies have been used and have shown excellent performance.

China still has "shortcomings" in the field of chip design in terms of design tools. Chip design is completed on the electronic design automation (EDA) software platform through computer logic compilation, simplification, segmentation, synthesis, optimization, layout, routing and simulation, and the software services are mainly provided by foreign companies.

In the field of chip manufacturing, including manufacturing processes and manufacturing equipment, China's overall capabilities need to be improved. Chip manufacturing sounds like traditional manufacturing, but in fact its manufacturing processes and equipment are much more sophisticated and complicated than the latter. Specifically, its processes include photolithography, etching, ion implantation, thin film growth, polishing, metallization, diffusion, oxidation... Corresponding to these manufacturing processes, there are more than 200 types of key manufacturing equipment, including photolithography machines, etchers, cleaning machines, cutting and thinning equipment, sorting machines, and diffusion, oxidation, and cleaning equipment required for other processes. The manufacturing technology requirements for each type of equipment are very high, and the manufacturing difficulty is extremely high and the cost is very high.

At present, in the field of chip manufacturing, most of the leading companies come from countries and regions such as the United States and Japan, and a large number of equipment for Chinese chip manufacturing plants need to be imported from abroad.

Having these advanced equipment is far from enough. Production lines must be set up and business plans must be formulated. It often takes 2-3 years to build a factory, install equipment and debug, which means that chip manufacturers must make judgments on market demand in advance. Chip manufacturing technology is constantly iterating and updating, and it is still unknown whether the previous equipment and production lines can meet market demand when they are actually put into production. If the newly built production line cannot fully achieve mass production, the previous investment will face major risks.

Xiakedao: We have successfully achieved leapfrogging and overtaking in many industrial fields, such as high-speed railways and household appliances, but this has not happened in the field of integrated circuits. What is the reason?

Ni Guangnan: From a historical perspective, we started late. In 1947, Bell Labs in the United States invented the semiconductor point-contact transistor. It was not until 1956 that China successfully produced the first silicon single crystal. Since early computers were made of discrete components (electron tubes, transistors, etc.), China could still follow foreign computer technology at that time.

As integrated circuits develop into the era of large-scale integrated circuits, China has obviously been unable to catch up due to the lack of support from the integrated circuit industry. However, the world's chip technology has made rapid progress. So far, although we have internationally renowned chip design and chip manufacturing companies such as Huawei HiSilicon and SMIC, in terms of overall industrial development, there is still a large gap compared to the world's first-class level.

The late start is an important historical reason, and the deviation of the dominant concept leading to insufficient innovation is the practical reason. In many aspects, we once hoped to solve the problem with a more convenient way, the so-called "it is better to buy than to make, and it is better to rent than to buy". Practice has proved that core technology cannot be bought. The "shortcomings" of China's chip technology and industry will ultimately need the Chinese people to solve them through down-to-earth innovation.

Xiake Island: Faced with internal "shortcomings" and external blockades, what should China's chip technology and industry do to achieve breakthroughs?

Ni Guangnan: From the perspective of supply chain security, once a link in the supply chain is "disconnected", the entire industry will be put in a passive position. In this case, we need to focus on breaking through the key core technologies in the weak links of the supply chain. The development of key core technologies is often a process from scratch, from small to large, and we must be mentally prepared to "sit on the bench for ten years".

The development and maturity of core technologies also cannot be separated from the support of the market. If newly developed core technologies and products do not have the opportunity to go to the market for trial and error, and do not enter the virtuous cycle of the market, it is difficult for both software and hardware to achieve user satisfaction. It is in this sense that General Secretary Xi Jinping requires good market-oriented guidance. We emphasize that in the process of government procurement, we must give certain support to domestically developed chips and software, so that they can enter commercial applications, be tested and honed, and only in this way can they continue to mature.

From the perspective of industrial clusters, we can refer to the industrial cluster model of Silicon Valley, where there are first-class research institutions and universities, many entrepreneurs, and abundant venture capital, forming a close cooperation network and realizing a strong combination of talents, technology, capital, and management.

Beijing's Zhongguancun has the potential to be built into a highland for chip technology and industrial clusters. We can make full use of the surrounding scientific research institutes and talent resources, add the support of national policies and capital, coordinate funds and R&D resources, strengthen industry-university-research cooperation, and create high-tech industrial cluster projects with Chinese characteristics.

The investment cycle for developing large-scale software or chip industries is often measured in 10 to 20 years, and the capital investment is very large. It is difficult to achieve a breakthrough by relying solely on the market and enterprises. This is because general enterprises will have market pressure, such as listed companies need to issue financial statements, make huge profits, and prove their performance to shareholders. Therefore, we must carry forward the advantages of combining the national system with the market economy, for example, formulate some long-term planning outlines and development plans at the national level. At the same time, we should actively introduce supporting support from the financial market, such as venture capital in terms of funds, encourage enterprises to invest in R&D and production, and pay attention to balancing the short-sighted behavior that may occur in the R&D process.

In general, the development of the integrated circuit industry requires long-term ideological preparation and investment. We cannot expect to get returns in just a few years. It will probably take another 10 to 20 years to truly develop the integrated circuit industry. We must have the determination and perseverance to fill the "shortcomings" of the industry and persevere in doing so.