The Development Trend of the IC Industry in the World

The integrated circuit industry is a strategic and basic industry for national economic and social development. It is the core and foundation of the electronic information industry and an important symbol of national economic development, technological development, and national defense strength. As integrated circuit products are widely used in various fields such as computers, mobile communications, consumer electronics, semiconductor lighting, and automobiles, the integrated circuit industry has become an important pillar of the information industry. According to statistics, for more than 10 consecutive years, mainland China's IC imports have exceeded petroleum, reaching US$170.2 billion in 2011, and the import volume ranks first among all types of products.

The IC industry, driven by strong market demand and the development of science and technology, has a very strong development momentum. The Party Central Committee and the State Council have proposed the decision to build an innovative country and accelerate the cultivation and development of strategic emerging industries. Strong integrated circuit technologies and industries will provide important support for China in the global economic development and competition in the post-financial crisis era. And basics.

The "post-Moore era" of the world's integrated circuit industry

After more than 50 years of development, the integrated circuit industry has continuously evolved and changed its industrial technology chain. The industrial structure has been gradually refined and the division of labor has become more and more detailed. The manufacturing process of integrated circuits still follows the rapid development of Moore's Law. The research on the precursor technology that continues Moore's Law is still a global hot spot. During the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” period, chip manufacturing technology will expand from 45 to 32 and 22 nanometers, while the maximum size of silicon wafers will reach 450 millimeters (18 inches), further reducing costs and saving energy, all of which are for manufacturing. Equipment and processes put forward new requirements. Since the invention of the integrated circuit, the chip has become irrefutably the basic form of electronic circuit integration. Since then, the rate of increase in integration has steadily advanced in accordance with Moore's Law. The view that Moore's law is still valid in the next few years is still generally accepted.

However, the practice of chip manufacturing shows that the reduction of manufacturing size will encounter various technical challenges, among which there are insurmountable physical limitations. An equally widely held view is that the shrinking of the chip size meets the physical constraints, and that the laws of physics will stop the development trend originally described by Moore's Law. According to Moore's Law, "The degree of integration of the chip is doubled every 18 months to 2 years, ie, the processing line width is reduced by half". It is generally assumed that the age of Moore's Law under the description of this law can continue for more than 10 years. Moore who proposed the law has also publicly stated that Moore's Law will be difficult to continue to be effective for more than ten years, because the processing limit of silicon materials is generally considered to be 10 nanometers in line width, which is restricted by physical principles and is unlikely to be less than 10 nanometers. Produce stable, highly integrated products.

At present, the development of global integrated circuit technology presents the following trends: First, based on considerations of economic factors, the number of chip factories that have decided to abandon ultra-miniature manufacturing technology is increasing; second, the development of ultra-compact manufacturing technologies continues, but not For a long time. Nakagawa Yuki, chief executive officer and vice president of the Semiconductor and Component Research Group at Sony Corporation in Japan, pointed out that the use of ultra-compact technology can not produce unique semiconductor products, nor can it bring more added value.

As integrated circuit manufacturing approaches the limit of Moore's Law, global semiconductor products will enter the era of low profit, which will have a major impact on China's integrated circuit manufacturing and packaging and testing industries. How to improve China's integrated circuit manufacturing and packaging and testing industry productivity and cost efficiency, so as to enhance overall industrial competitiveness has become the most concerned topic of IC companies in China. In the post-Moore era, the development of China's integrated circuit industry will further increase the requirements for integrated circuit design and reliability testing. Through vertical integration and utilization of the industry's supply chain system, we will innovate business models to achieve higher yields, productivity, and the fastest The time to market, to achieve rapid and sustainable industrial development.

The two major industrial models have become mainstream and the trend of industrial integration is obvious

Since the 50s and 60s of the 20th century, integrated circuit products have gradually developed from small-scale integrated circuits to current large-scale integrated circuits. The development of the entire integrated circuit products has undergone a process from the traditional on-board system to the on-chip system. In this historical process, the world's integrated circuit industry has experienced three changes in order to adapt to technological development and market demand. The first revolution is the primary stage of the development of the integrated circuit industry dominated by processing and manufacturing; the second transformation is reflected in the separation and development of foundry-based companies that focus on manufacturing and processing and integrated circuit design companies that focus on chip design; The "integrated industries" integrated circuit industry emerged, which formed a situation in which the design, manufacturing, packaging, and testing industries operated independently.

The integrated component manufacturer model (IDM model) refers to the integrated circuit manufacturer's own design, and sells the finished product chips processed, packaged, and tested by its own production line. Such as early Intel, Toshiba, South Korea's Samsung and other companies have adopted this model. The advantage of the IDM model is that IDM vendors can formulate comprehensive development strategies based on market characteristics, and can fine-tune the quality control of each aspect of design, manufacturing, and packaging. IDM does not require outsourcing and has higher profits; the disadvantage of the IDM model is that the amount of investment increases, the risk is high, and there is a need for superior products as guarantees. IDM technology spans a large span and spans three major areas. Enterprises must not only consider technical issues at each stage, but also must coordinate three major areas. However, with the continuous evolution of the development of the international semiconductor industry, the trend of outsourcing OEMs of international IDM manufacturers is gradually forming, which catalyzes the foundry-wide business model.

The Foundry Mode (Fabless & Foundry mode) refers to the way that integrated circuit design work is combined with a standard process line. That is, the design company will give the final physical layout of the designed chip to the chip processing enterprise, which is the manufacturing and manufacturing of the outsourced foundry. Similarly, package testing is also commissioned by professional manufacturers, and the final product chip is sold as a product of an integrated circuit design company.

With the rapid development of the integrated circuit industry technology, the technological advantage factors formerly used by IC manufacturers have gradually disappeared. At present, each IC company has mastered the same process technology at about the same time. The mastery of system design replaces the mastery of process technology and becomes the difference between IC companies. The integrated circuit industry in Taiwan is in the leading position in the world of foundry. In the face of new changes and challenges, it is bound to choose new integration relationships and production models. How to use R&D, design, manufacturing, and marketing functions to refine and decompose, seek more advanced production models, meet the needs of the local market, and achieve a constantly renewed system reorganization, which has become a major issue for today's global IC companies.

Manufacturing Service Becomes a New Direction for the Development of Integrated Circuit Industry

Manufacturing service trend is the inevitable result of social economic development and technological progress. In the low-level stage of human production and development, manufacturing production activities rely mainly on inputs such as energy and raw materials. With the development of society and the advancement of science and technology, the status of service elements in production is increasingly important, and the service resources required for production have gradually increased.

With the development of information technology and the deepening of the understanding of the importance of "customer satisfaction" by enterprises, more and more manufacturing companies in the world are no longer focusing solely on the production of physical products, but the entire life cycle of product design. Service plays an increasingly important role in the manufacturing value chain. Manufacturing companies are transforming themselves into service companies in a sense. The transformation of output services has become one of the trends in the manufacturing industry in the world today.

IBM has long been positioned as a "hardware manufacturer." However, in the 1990s, IBM was caught in an unprecedented situation and the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. Under the leadership of Gerstner, IBM has successfully transformed from a manufacturing company to an information technology and business solutions company. Its global business consulting services department has specialized consultants in more than 160 countries and is the world's largest consulting service organization. In 2006, IBM's hardware revenue accounted for only 24.61% of total revenue. The rest of the revenue came from global services, software, and global financial services.

At present, in the global market environment of homogenous competition and oversupply, the added value of integrated circuit product processing and manufacturing is getting lower and lower, and the high-end value-added links of integrated circuit manufacturing industry have already served the development of product R&D, operation, and maintenance. Cycle transfer. Promoting the service of integrated circuit manufacturing has become a major trend in the global integrated circuit manufacturing industry. Under the background of the in-depth development of economic globalization and new breakthroughs in technological innovation, the integrated circuit industry is developing toward globalization, leanness, collaboration, and service. In the future, the transition from “production-oriented” to “service-oriented” will be realized. The transition from "hard capability" construction to "soft power" improvement will change from providing users with products and simple services to providing system solutions and values. The boundaries of producer services, especially manufacturing, have become increasingly blurred. Economic activities have shifted from product manufacturing to service experience.

The World Integrated Circuit Industry Continuation of the "Geese Model"

The goose pattern theory refers to the theoretical pattern that is relevant to the country of innovation in terms of technology gaps. In 1956, the Japanese economists proposed the “geese model” of industrial development to describe the process of the emergence and development of a specific industry (such as the 19th century Japanese cotton spinning industry) from the latter. The development of an industry follows the three stages of transfer from acceptance to domestic production and then to export, and the dynamic evolution according to the model of “import-domestic production (import substitution)-export” will be conducted between countries and industrialization. Latecomers will follow the lead of industrialization. Since the growth of the product in this industry has experienced three stages from import-domestic production-export, if this process is plotted as a graph, on a graph with the horizontal axis as the age and the vertical axis as the market, these three The stages are like three wild geese flying.

In the past half century, the world’s integrated circuit industry experienced two “expansion” industries: for the first time in the late 1970s, “expanded” from the United States to Japan, creating Fujitsu, Hitachi, Toshiba, NEC and other worlds. The top IC manufacturers; the second time in the late 1980s, South Korea and Taiwan became the main force of the integrated circuit industry. After the United States and Japan, South Korea became the third semiconductor industry center in the world.

Global industry "expanding" provides opportunities for China to expand its industrial scale, and the strategic adjustment of multinational integrated circuit companies to the "fab" model also brings development opportunities to China's integrated circuit industry: European, American, Japanese and South Korean manufacturers will increasingly focus on their own The core technology, and the gradual transfer of non-core technology. Under the background of the eastward movement of technology, integrated circuit design companies in Taiwan and mainland China will all benefit in the long-term. In particular, IC design companies in mainland China will make greater progress in the future.

At present, China has become a major manufacturing and consumption country of integrated circuits and a certain degree of manufacturing in Asia due to the huge market demand, low production costs, abundant human resources, and stable economic development and superior policy support. It is being replaced by "Made in China." In the future, with the development of global integrated circuit manufacturing technologies and changes in manufacturing costs and other conditions, as well as the upgrading of China’s IC industry’s technological capabilities, integrated circuit traditional manufacturing industry will show the trend of “expanding” the industry again, from China, etc. Developing countries have gradually "expanded" themselves from developing countries.

The development of the IC industry is not only related to technology, but also involves the transformation of business concepts, the transformation of development models, and the innovation of development paths. It is an overall and strategic huge system project. We have reason to believe that the development of the industry Full understanding of the law, a sound and effective industrial development policy support system and industrial planning will certainly play an important role in promoting the healthy development of China's integrated circuit industry.