The domestic new generation of artificial intelligence chips released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently covers the fields of image recognition, security monitoring, and smart driving. Xinhua News Agency
Chips are the "crown jewels" in the field of information and communications hardware. In the past, they were held by a few giants. China's smart device manufacturers have been repeatedly constrained, and China's chip self-sufficiency rate is only 10%. However, this situation may be broken. The domestic chip is expected to achieve a key breakthrough in 2018, and the terminal AI chip is one of the breakthroughs. This helps Chinese enterprises leapfrog in the era of 5G Internet of Everything; and Huawei represents the "China Core" for the first time. Being among the top five in the world, it has also enabled Shenzhen's information and communications industry to achieve new growth.
China's chip self-sufficiency rate is only 10%
"China Core" has become a hot spot, behind which is a huge market space of trillions of yuan. China is the largest chip demand market. The number of smart devices such as mobile phones, computers, and consumer robots manufactured each year is counted as billions, but the domestic chip self-sufficiency rate is only 10%. In the CPU area, only Huawei uses its own chip. In the field of IC manufacturing, SMIC, the domestic leader, still needs to accelerate its technology iterations. Competitors such as Samsung and TSMC have already started to develop 7-nanometer technology. SMIC is in urgent need of a big step to catch up. According to data released by the General Administration of Customs, the import amount of integrated circuits in China in 2016 was US$227.02 billion.
The import substitution of “China Core†has become one of the national key industrial strategies. Driven by terminal industries such as Internet of Things, autopilot, VR, and artificial intelligence, the domestic chip industry has entered a period of rapid development. Up to now, more than 20 Chinese integrated circuit design companies have been listed, and more than 70 semiconductor companies have been listed on the A-share market.
According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the national integrated circuit sales in 2016 reached 433.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20%, and the average compound growth rate in the past 14 years was as high as 22%. Future growth in areas such as artificial intelligence, consumer electronics, the Internet of Things, and smart vehicles will drive the rapid growth of China's chip market.
According to industry analysts, the global chip and integrated circuit industry is rapidly shifting to China, and a new wave of investment is emerging in China. The packaging and testing industry currently accounts for the largest share in China and has become the most internationally competitive link in the IC industry chain. The national strategy of chip is leading independent research and development to form a breakthrough, and domestic chips are expected to rise rapidly.
"China Core" first among the top five in the world
Market research institute CounterpointResearch recently released the third quarter of 2017 global smart system-on-chip (SoC) market statistics report, Huawei Hass chips obtained 8% of the world's market share, this is the "China Core" for the first time among the top five global counterparts. The list shows that Qualcomm has the highest market share with 42%, Apple's 20% chip occupancy rate, and MediaTek's market share in the third place dropped by 4%. Samsung, which ranks fourth, has an 11% share.
Another market research firm, Gartner, reported that the global chip market grew by 22% to $419.7 billion in 2017, which is due to the development of smart phones and other connected devices. It is worth noting that Samsung surpassed Intel to become the world's largest chip maker in sales. This is the first time Intel has been exceeded since 1992, reflecting the global chip market is beginning a new round of reshuffle. Gartner pointed out that in 2017 memory chips accounted for more than two-thirds of all chip revenue growth, becoming the largest chip type.
Counterpoint Research Director Neil Saha believes that artificial intelligence will be the mainstream of chip development. In the future, the focus of competition in the mobile phone chip industry will be on the improvement of the overall performance of mobile phones. Apple and Huawei are choosing to integrate separate AI chip units; Another way is to enhance the AI ​​processing capabilities of the processor cluster.
AI terminal chip is expected to be a breakthrough
In the "Made in China 2025" plan, China plans that by 2025, the domestic self-sufficiency rate will reach 50%. Raising the current self-sufficiency rate from around 10% to 50% means that the next few years will be the accelerated development phase of the semiconductor industry. Recently, chip giants such as Samsung and SK Hynix have established factories in China, and domestic manufacturers such as Ziguang International and Changjiang Storage have vigorously acquired them. It is estimated that by 2020, there will be 62 global wafer fabs, of which 26 are in China.
Artificial intelligence will become an opportunity for domestic chip cornering overtaking. The chip is the core of artificial intelligence. How big is the market prospect of artificial intelligence? How big is the prospect of the chip? According to statistics, the global market for artificial intelligence chips in 2016 reached 600 million U.S. dollars, and is expected to reach 5.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, with a compound annual growth rate of 53%. In 2017, the market size of China's artificial intelligence market exceeded 13 billion yuan, an increase of 40.7%, and it is expected to reach 20 billion yuan in 2018. The demand for artificial intelligence chips will grow rapidly.
Communication expert Mai Haochao pointed out that artificial intelligence is not limited to computers, mobile phones, etc. From driverless cars, drones to smart home appliances of various types, the demand for artificial intelligence custom chips will be several times that of smart phones. Currently, most of the giants are mostly deploying cloud-based AI chips. The Chinese chip industry is expected to make breakthroughs in the terminal AI chips, and this segmented market will have more space. Affected by the transfer of the chip industry to Asia, coupled with strong demand for chip import substitution, and the support of China's industrial policies, the rise of the domestic chip industry is gradually hopping.
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