The US Department of Commerce announced on April 16 that it will ban US companies from selling components, goods, software and technology to ZTE for seven years until March 13, 2025. The key spare parts imported by ZTE from the United States will be semiconductor chips. The Sino-U.S. trade war is rampant. At this time, the U.S. government issued an export restraint order against ZTE on an extremely ridiculous excuse. It is difficult not to suspect that the U.S. government is putting pressure on the Chinese side.
I. Semiconductors - the next card in the trade war with China
For a long time, the United States has been very vigilant about the development of China's semiconductor industry. The U.S. Department of Commerce has a strict export ban on Chinese chips and related technologies. On January 6, 2017, the "Technical Advisory Committee," then President Barack Obama, released a report titled "Ensuring U.S. Semiconductor's Long-term Leadership" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report") on the White House website: "The core of this report is Only through continuous innovation in cutting-edge technology can we mitigate the threats posed by China’s semiconductors and promote the development of the U.S. economy. The “Influences on China’s behavior†section of the report clearly states that it is necessary to unite its allies to strengthen global export controls and internal controls. Investment security.
The “301 investigation†mainly accused China of four issues: mandatory technology transfer, discriminatory licensing requirements, state capital support for overseas mergers and acquisitions, and illegal commercial hacking. The first, second, and third items cited by the United States and China The case also mainly involves the Chinese semiconductor industry. Trump also asked the relevant U.S. authorities to step up restrictions on China’s investment in high-tech companies in the U.S., and personally prevented China-related fund companies from acquiring Lattice, the US FPGA company, and basically closed down China’s acquisition of any U.S. semiconductor company. The door. The two major excuses of China's "unfair trade" proposed by the "New Trade Union" that were recently formed by Europe, the United States, and Japan are: First, state subsidies and government subsidies, and second, foreign companies are required to transfer key technologies. It is also mainly China's semiconductor industry.
In 2017, the global integrated circuit market reached US$340 billion, of which 54% of the chips were exported to China. The “Research Report on China-US Economic and Trade Relations†issued by the Ministry of Commerce in May 2017 showed that 15% of chips exported by the United States are sold to China. According to statistics from Statista, in 2017, the United States exported $6 billion worth of chips to China, ranking fourth behind aircraft, soybeans, and automobiles. However, a considerable portion of the United States semiconductor chips are sold to China through overseas branches of US companies (companies registered in Singapore, Hong Kong, etc., or even their joint ventures or subsidiaries in China). According to the statistics of the core research, based on the public annual report of 13 leading semiconductor companies in the US, the sum of sales in China reached 70.97 billion US dollars. This shows that the chip is the stealth champion of US trade with China. Even so, Trump is still putting pressure on China to buy more chips in the United States. At the same time, various policy dividends have been used to strengthen the advantages of the semiconductor industry in the United States and have achieved good results. For example, recently, Broadcom has returned to the United States, and TSMC has established the world's most advanced semiconductor foundry in the United States.
It can thus be seen that this trade war against China provoked by the United States will surely be the highlight of the game between the warring parties. On the one hand, semiconductor companies in the United States, Japan, and Europe have huge investment and market interests in China. On the other hand, China is facing heavy pressure on chip imports and has always wanted to get rid of ropes that are trapped on the neck. Therefore, the semiconductor chip is not only an important chip for both sides of the game, but it is also a double-edged sword. It is worth noting when the parties to the conflict played and how to play the chip. The U.S. ban on ZTE is likely to trigger the first shot of a chip attack against China.
On March 23, Beijing time, US President Trump announced that on the same day that China intends to impose punitive tariffs on commodities worth up to US$50 billion, the Japanese government also decided to impose anti-dumping duties on some of China’s steel products at the cabinet meeting. . Immediately afterwards, Japan and the European Union submitted documents to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on April 3 and April 4, respectively, asking them to join the United States in filing complaints with the WTO about China's "discriminatory licensing of patented technology." Therefore, China should clearly realize that although the United States, the European Union, and Japan are not among ironclad ones, they are likely to jointly target China; this trade war with China may well have evolved from the "China-US conflict" to China and the "eight-nation coalition." Battle. Therefore, China needs to make preparations for the United States, Europe, and Japan to put pressure on Chinese integrated circuits. Before the request of the Obama administration, the German government had withdrawn the license granted to the Chinese company for the purchase of the German semiconductor equipment company Ai Siqiang. The British company Arm acquired by Japan Softbank also cut its support for ZTE for the first time in March 2016 in accordance with the requirements of the US Department of Commerce.
Second, get the chip to get the world - "Tianwangshan battle" against China trade war
China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA) statistics show that in 2017 China's semiconductor chip market reached 1.40 trillion yuan, maintaining a growth rate of more than double digits in the year. The share of China's semiconductor chip market in global share is from 7% in 2000 to 46% expected in 2020 (about 43% in 2017).
Figure 1: China's Semiconductor Imports and Exports Over the Years
As the world's largest consumer of semiconductor chips, China’s semiconductor chip market is heavily dependent on imports. In the past few years, China’s chip imports have remained at around US$200 billion and its self-sufficiency rate is less than 20%. .
Figure 2: China's IC self-sufficiency rate is less than 20%
Although the Chinese semiconductor industry has made great progress in recent years, it is still in the low-end sector in the global chip industry. The self-sufficiency rates of the high-end processor chips represented by the CPU are all single digits, and the self-sufficiency rate of chips such as memory is close to zero. Even though Huawei Hass has achieved good results in the communication baseband chip and application processor chip, the core processor IP is still from companies such as Arm and Cadence.
Figure 3: Self-sufficiency rate of domestic mainstream chips
Since 2013, along with the establishment of a national billion-dollar IC industry fund and local government's strong support for the IC industry, China’s semiconductor chip sales have maintained a high growth rate of over 15%. The growth rate of global semiconductor chip sales averaged less than 5% during 2013-2016. In the face of the rapidly growing Chinese semiconductor industry, the United States, Europe, and Japan are likely to hope that through this trade war, China will be forced to abandon its support for the semiconductor industry's national investment and government subsidies. At the same time, it will strive for more and more favorable conditions for access to the Chinese market for its domestic semiconductor companies, such as removing the restrictive clauses for foreign chip manufacturers in the ratio of government procurement and Sino-foreign joint ventures, thereby restraining or slowing the rise of the Chinese chip industry. . While China has its market advantages, it will certainly hope to further optimize the semiconductor industry policy, improve the business environment of China's domestic semiconductor chip companies, and most importantly, in the field of chip design, it will revolutionize innovation and fundamentally shorten China’s semiconductor industry. The gap between advanced world levels. In view of the pioneering and leading role played by the chip in the so-called “new economy†of downstream 5G communications, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, robotics, and driverlessness, the chip can be said to have the world and the country’s rise must first be protected. The rise of the chip industry. Therefore, the offensive and defensive battle between semiconductor chips in China and the United States will be the “Terrain Mountain Battle†in this trade conflict. China would rather “sacrifice†other local interests and ensure that it is in the field of semiconductor chips. Strategic determination.
Third, the CPU - the winner of the chip battle
The global chip can basically be divided into: communication chip, calculation and control chip, memory chip, audio and video processing chip, power management chip, sensor chip, driver chip, and the system chip (SoC: System on Chip) of the above chip combination. Among them, the two major categories of computing and storage chips are approximately US$100 billion in sales. The memory chip itself does not involve information security and is controlled by several giant companies such as Samsung, Hynix, Toshiba, Micron, and Intel in the United States, Japan, and Korea. China has recently invested a large amount of money in the storage sector and several production lines are about to be put into production. Computing chips include: a CPU (Central Processor Unit) that is monopolized by Intel and Arm; a GPU (Graphic Processor Unit) that is monopolized by Nvidia and AMD, and a DSP (Digital Signal) monopolized by Texas Instruments. Processor (Digital Signal Processor). The core of the CPU computing chip is not only the operating system running on it, but also shoulders the security mission of the entire computing system. In the past 30 years, humans have experienced three waves of disruptive industrial waves triggered by digitization, the Internet, and the mobile Internet. Relying on advances in semiconductor technology and architectural innovations, CPU processor performance continues to leap and is the most user-friendly and versatile computing platform, taking on the major computational load in the above application areas, and thus becoming the key behind every wave of industry waves. Push hands.
Figure 4: CPU Development Trends over the Past 30 Years
At present, the research and development methods of domestic CPU can be roughly divided into three categories: purchase authorization, joint venture, and independent research and development.
The first category uses the purchase authorization: the technology introduction route, the purchase of IP authorization from foreign CPUs, and the use of existing ecosystems to open up the market. For example, Huawei and Spreadtrum have licensed IP design chips from Arm.
Based on Arm's authorization, Huawei Hass achieved outstanding performance from K3 in 2009 to Kirin 970 in 2017. However, Huawei has obtained the Arm instruction set authorization model, but it does not have the capability of independent innovation. Not only is the licensing fee high, but also the time limit for authorization is only 4-5 years, and it is also limited in scope of use. The most critical issue is that Huawei faces the same risks as ZTE. Once the U.S. or Japanese government proposes sanctions, Arm will have to stop technical support, and authorized companies are immediately faced with extreme disasters.
The second type employs joint ventures/cooperation: More than 10 years ago, China began to transfer technology through the establishment of joint ventures with foreign companies to develop its technology industry. Through joint ventures/cooperation, China has successively obtained the technical ability to design high-end processors, while training a group of technical talents. Shanghai Zhaoxin, Guizhou Huaxintong and Tianjin Haiguang all belong to this model. In the historical environment at that time, the joint venture was indeed a useful attempt. It is a short-term choice with low R&D risk and low marketing difficulty. However, the joint venture itself has determined that it is difficult for China to fail to establish the overall framework of foreign technology, and it is difficult to form the capacity for independent innovation.
Figure 5: General situation of joint ventures/cooperation with foreign companies
The third category adopts independent innovation, namely, the instruction set, tool chain and micro-architecture of independent intellectual property rights are independently developed by using Godson, Shen Wei, and Huaxia Core as representatives.
Figure 6: Status of Domestic Chips
As the world's second-largest economy, China is absolutely necessary to build China's computing chip industry ecosystem based on autonomous and controllable instruction sets and high-reliability autonomous micro-architecture, and gradually build a secure and controllable information technology system. The broad and deep impact of CPU design flaws, such as Meltdown and Spectre, which were exposed in early 2018, gave China a wake-up call. Not only did Intel, AMD, Arm and other giants recruit all of them, but also all joint ventures or companies that licensed these companies’ CPU technology. Chip companies are also affected. Therefore, experts including Ni Guangnan and Wei Shaojun have introspected and pointed out that China needs to realize the self-controllability of the two key technologies of the hardware instruction set and microarchitecture of the underlying hardware of the CPU and rely on the independent improvement and self-improvement of the underlying hardware and architecture design. Only in this way can we achieve an active defense system for similar events in the future.
At present, the instruction set system of Intel and Arm companies has basically monopolized almost all smart phones, computers and servers in the world. However, the PC and mobile phone industry has become saturated and is no longer the biggest growth driver for the IC industry. In the fields of artificial intelligence, smart driving, Internet of Things, AR/VR, blockchain, etc., there is no monopoly giant, and no ecosystem has been formed at all. Domestically produced CPUs in these areas have bright prospects.
With the rise of artificial intelligence, new computational units for deep learning and other neural network algorithms, namely AI-specific processors, have developed rapidly. Our country is totally on the same starting line with foreign chip manufacturers in these fields. A number of domestic chip developers competed to release their own AI processor chips:
Figure 7: Domestically released AI-specific processor
However, it should be pointed out that these deep-learning dedicated processors are only equivalent to the CPU's co-processor. Like current audio and video processing chips, as a specific functional unit, most of them will eventually be integrated into the CPU. Leading SoC chip goes. Recently, Nvidia Corporation has freely open-sourced the design of its deep learning processor and teamed up with Arm to establish an ecosystem of CPU + AI, which has caused a huge impact on domestic AI-specific processor companies. Therefore, it is not feasible to rely on AI to break the overall backwardness of China's computing chips. In fact, the entire computing chip has entered the “CPU+†era of heterogeneous integration of CPUs and GPUs, dedicated processors, and other computing units. Hennessy, the new Google chairman and computer architecture master, once stated that CPUs are different from multiple computing units. Compositional architecture is the design trend of AI chips. Therefore, Google, Apple, and Samsung are all working on a new generation of CPU architectures to better support heterogeneous computing.
In contrast, China has not received sufficient attention in the new generation of heterogeneous computing. Looking at the history of integrated circuit development, latecomers can take the top priority and seize the opportunity of technological innovation and application innovation to become a great company. For example, Arm took hold of new applications that broke out in mobile terminals, launched low-power processors that meet market demands, beat competitors such as Intel, and firmly occupied the mobile processor market. In the area of ​​artificial intelligence, Nvidia leverages the advantages of its GPUs. On the server side, it occupies a large number of markets. In the new generation of CPUs, the rise of RISC V has to some extent already constituted a threat to Arm. Therefore, if China is to deploy ahead of schedule, it will have the opportunity to deeply influence the development direction of industries related to heterogeneous computing. In the next round of international competition in the processor industry, it will participate in formulating new rules of the game and become the leader on the new runway. On the contrary, if the international giants are to be laid out, we will only passively accept the new rules of the game. This will not only make the existing domestic CPU processor manufacturers' living environment more difficult, but also be at a distance from the international advanced level in technology and industry. It will also increase in size and repeat the mistakes of the previous generation of CPU processors.
Many times before, many people of insight called on China to develop CPU chips with independent intellectual property rights. Today, according to public reports, no matter whether it is a national integrated circuit investment fund with a scale of 140 billion, or local integrated circuit funds that are keen to introduce international giants, it has not invested in any CPU chip company with independent intellectual property rights. On the contrary, international chip giants such as ARM, AMD, IBM, and Qualcomm, which are facing severe challenges in new technologies and new markets, continue to obtain high-price "bloods" through joint ventures, authorizations, commissions, and even the formation of joint venture funds. Not only has it further strengthened its market expansion capabilities in China, but it also has made domestically-manufactured CPU manufacturers, who are determined to independently innovate in R&D, remain in an unfair competitive environment for a long time. Today, the wolf has arrived, how does China deal with it? At least domestic CPU chip companies continue to work hard and become stronger!
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