Ideals "hacked": Undervalued domestic chips

Late at night on May 25, Li Xiang, CEO of Li Auto, posted on Weibo in response to "Ideal was hacked."

Li Xiang said that the unified rhetoric of Ideal being "hacked" is: extensive use of local Chinese suppliers, but Ideal is proud of its extensive use of local Chinese suppliers. Li Xiang revealed that the chip localization rate of the Ideal L series has exceeded 25%, and it is likely to be the model with the highest chip localization rate.

The reason why Ideal was "hacked" turned out to be because of the use of local suppliers, which I did not expect. This actually reflects the subconscious "discrimination" of Chinese people against domestic chips .

As we all know, it is difficult to get car-grade chips into cars. Because of the word "safety", there are requirements for the chip production process. Looking at the results, the self-sufficiency rate of domestic automotive-standard devices is indeed not high, only 8%. However, in recent years, many domestic chips have passed "vehicle-standard" certification.

Just like in terms of power devices , Silan Micro has a monthly production capacity of 70,000 automotive-grade power modules; Star Semiconductor's automotive-grade  SiC  MOSFET  modules used in passenger car main controllers have begun to be installed in large quantities for vehicle applications.

In terms of memory chips, GigaDevice’s innovative SPI  NOR Flash automotive-grade product capacity has been fully deployed; Beijing Junzheng automotive-grade SRAM and automotive-grade DRAM are among the best in the global automotive grade market segment; Juchen Co., Ltd.’s automotive-grade EEPROM products have begun Available in large quantities.

Looking at Ideal events, Li Xiang also mentioned that Li Auto uses many local suppliers, including Horizon and Xinchi for domestic chips, Changxin memory, Hesai for lidar , CATL and Xinwangda for batteries . , Kong Hui and Baolong of air suspension, Bethel of braking system, future black technology of HUD, etc.

In fact, it is not ideal to choose a local supplier. At a relevant meeting, Changan Automobile revealed that in the first half of 2022, Changan Automobile used a total of 19 million domestic chips, accounting for 35% of the total application volume in the industry, ranking first among independent brands.

BYD, which will surpass Tesla in electric vehicle sales in 2022 and become the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer, has already chosen to develop its own domestic semiconductors . Its holding subsidiary BYD Semiconductor has a complete automotive-grade IGBT industry chain. BYD not only purchases IGBT modules from BYD's semiconductor department , but also uses domestic IGBTs from domestic power device manufacturers such as Silan Micro, Star Semiconductor, Times Electric, and China Resources Micro.

01. Domestic chips are “not confident”

The "inferiority" syndrome of domestic chips did not arise suddenly. Indeed, there is currently a certain gap between us and foreign chip powers in the chip field. Many people have asked over and over again, "How does the quality of domestic chips compare with imported chips?" "How big is the gap between Chinese chips?"

Around 2015, domestic doubts about domestic chips were rampant. After Feiteng's Mars 64 core CPU landed at the industry's Hotchips conference, it became the second domestic CPU to land at Hotchips after Loongson. At that time, there were rumors that this was another major case of funding fraud arising from the current scientific research system that lacked control and integrity.

The reason for this is "lack of confidence". It is difficult to believe that domestic companies can achieve such results. This is similar to 2003, when someone asked when China's GDP would catch up with Japan's. When I heard that the answer was 10 years from now, it attracted a lot of ridicule and unconfident remarks. But in fact, by 2010, China's GDP surpassed Japan's and is now more than three times that of Japan.

In fact, in 2022, China imported 538.4 billion integrated circuits, with an import value of US$415.6 billion, and exported 273.4 billion integrated circuits, with an export value of US$153.9 billion. What is the concept? Compare it to South Korea, which is a semiconductor powerhouse with giants like Samsung.

South Korea's semiconductor exports in 2022 will be US$130.8 billion. In other words, our domestic chip export capabilities have quietly surpassed South Korea.

In recent years, domestic semiconductors have made visible progress. Nowadays, induction cookers with more than 30 yuan can be seen everywhere on Aoduoduo . When the core IGBT chips were only imported, the sales price of the induction cookers was more than 500 yuan. It was only after China conquered the problem that induction cookers worth 30 yuan could be used.

If the example of the induction cooker is not profound enough, there is one most intuitive one - now the domestic home appliance industry has completely replaced foreign countries, while ten or twenty years ago it was still dominated by Japan.

02. In what aspects, Chinese chips are actually very strong?

The first is in terms of chip design. Academician Ni Guangnan once made a judgment: "In terms of chip design, China has done well. China has the largest number of chip design companies in the world, and its chip design level ranks second in the world, second only to the United States."

Among the top ten chip design companies in the world, the domestic company Vail Co., Ltd. is on the list. Before HiSilicon was sanctioned, Huawei HiSilicon also broke into the top ten, ranking fifth.

Leaving HiSilicon aside for the moment, Vail’s shares are not in vain. From a revenue perspective, Vail's total operating revenue will reach 20.078 billion yuan in 2022, with annual shipments exceeding 12.3 billion.

In terms of products, Weil is the strongest CIS factory in China and one of the three giants in the world (the other two are Sony and Samsung). Last year, Samsung released an image sensor with a unit pixel size as small as 0.56 microns (㎛ ) . At the time of the sensation, Vail Co., Ltd. also successively launched related products with pixel sizes of 0.61 microns and 0.56 microns, which can be said to be catching up step by step.

In terms of CPU, the domestic Wuxi "Sunway TaihuLight" supercomputer using Sunway CPU has topped the world's TOP500 supercomputers three times in a row. Loongson Zhongke has also developed a CPU with independent intellectual property rights. It is understood that Loongson's 3A6000 will be tape-out in the first half of this year. Some analysts say that the IPC of the Loongson 3A6000 PC processor will reach the level of AMD Zen3 or 11th generation Core.

In terms of mobile phone processors, UNISOC ranks fourth in global shipments. Ziguang Zhanrui entered the top five in the world for the first time in May 2021 because Honor Play 20 is equipped with the Huben T610 chip, and Ziguang Zhanrui shipped 8 million units. Unisoc’s growth rate in the mobile phone processor market has exceeded 6,000%.

Currently, mobile phones equipped with Unisoc chips include: ZTE Yuanhang 40 (using Unisoc T760), Nokia 110 4G (using Unisoc T107), Hisense F70 Lite mobile phone (using Unisoc T750) and so on.

In terms of power semiconductors, in the automotive field mentioned earlier, in the field of automotive-grade MOSFETs, Nexperia, Silan Microelectronics, Jiejie Microelectronics, etc. are all continuing to develop; in the field of automotive-grade IGBTs, currently BYD Semiconductor, Star Semiconductor Guide and Times Electric rank among the top domestic manufacturers.

Even Goodix Technology, which has not performed well recently, is already ranked second in the world in the field of fingerprint recognition chip design, second only to AuthenTec, which provides fingerprint recognition chips to Apple. In the field of biometric identification, Goodix’s optical under-screen fingerprint recognition solution ranks first in the world in market share.

In addition, in terms of storage, there are Yangtze Memory and GigaDevice in China; Zhuosheng Micro is the domestic radio frequency unicorn; Geke Micro CIS shipments rank first in the world; Pingtou Ge continues to launch RISC-V architecture CPUs; BOE It has long become a global leader in display panels.

The second is chip packaging and testing. China's semiconductor packaging and testing capabilities are not weak either. It can be said that after 40 years of continuous development of semiconductors, the packaging and testing link has become the most competitive and most competitive link in domestic semiconductors.

Similarly, judging from the ranking of the top ten global packaging and testing manufacturers, there are three from mainland China, not to mention the third, fifth and sixth places. The total share is as high as about 20%. If Taiwan is included, the total can reach 8. Among them, the third place is Changdian Technology, the fifth place is Tongfu Microelectronics, and the sixth place is Huatian Technology.

As early as 2022, Changdian Technology has announced that the company has made a breakthrough and achieved the packaging of mobile phone chips using the 4-nanometer (nm) process . Tongfu Microelectronics is now embarking on the strategy of "based on 7nm and advancing to 5nm", conducting in-depth research and development of new 5nm products, and fully supporting customers in the introduction of 5nm products. Similarly, Huatian Technology also stated that the company has 5nm packaging technology.

In fact, not only design and packaging and testing, but also domestic manufacturing companies such as SMIC, Huahong Semiconductor, and Jinghe Integration also occupy a certain position in the world.

Many foreign entrepreneurs are amazed by the development speed of China's semiconductors. Isao Matsumoto, president of Japanese power semiconductor company Rohm, once said: "China is making a nationwide effort to promote the development of this area (domestic power devices), and its catching up speed is amazing."

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, whose market value exceeds 1 trillion, has always said: "Don't underestimate China's ability to catch up in the chip field."