However, even if the "attractive" salary is offered, it has become increasingly difficult for IC design chip companies to train outstanding talents in the past two years. "The employees who left the company jumped to OPPO, vivo, and even AI companies such as Cambrian and Horizon, and some salaries directly doubled." An engineer of Zhanrui once said in an interview that the increase of external opportunities has brought more choices to practitioners in the industry.
In recent years, many mobile phone companies have arranged their interview sites next to the offices of these chip companies in order to form a self-developed chip team. In the latest year, a mobile phone manufacturer provided the chip director of ISP with a monthly salary of 6.5438+0.5 million yuan, and the annual salary was as high as 6.5438+0.8 million yuan.
With the chip research and development entering the "deep water area", the competition from R&D personnel to the "bottom technology" of technology patent layout began to show a white-hot trend. According to the data provided by Wisdom Bud Global Patent Database to Caijing, at present, the technical layout of mobile phone manufacturers in the field of mobile phone chips has covered many fields such as baseband chips, power management chips, wireless charging, fingerprint identification, ptz and driver chips.
Chip self-research is the only way.
If mobile phone manufacturers want to make better products, chip self-research is the only way. Although the investment is huge, it has gradually become a knowledge in the industry.
"More than a decade ago, most mobile phones were OEM, or chip manufacturers such as Qualcomm, MediaTek and Spreadtrum directly provided 10% reference design scheme, and mobile phone manufacturers could sell it with a little change. In the last five years, the competition of mobile phones has become the competition of core technologies, that is, the competition of the integration ability of all industries. " The person in charge of a domestic chip company told reporters that from the trend, the consolidation of core technologies such as chips by mobile phone manufacturers will undoubtedly enhance the competitiveness of their products, and it is also an investment in exchange for "future space".
Specifically, China has launched a larger-scale commercial movement in human history for more than 40 years. The demographic dividend is essentially a dividend, which is a dividend centered on economic construction. Among them, manufacturing enterprises have entered the center of the world stage in the name of the world factory, but compared with Japan and Germany, there are not enough technologies that can really be called high-tech.
Take the mobile phone as an example. Although China's mobile phone brands have occupied more than 50% of the world's share, I must consider whether and how to go on. But the answer is also very clear. The era of great opportunities has gone, and the business concept of opportunities is not only outdated, but also easy to get narrower and narrower.
Judging from the history of mobile phone self-developed chips, Huawei was the first to join. Although it took many detours, it was also a more effective one.
In 2007, when Huawei began to attack the chip solution, R&D insiders compared it to climbing a snowy mountain, which needed to be conquered step by step. Balong is located in Dingri County, with an altitude of 7013m. Therefore, Ba Long has become the name of the baseband chip in Huawei chip family, and his qualifications are equivalent to "Big Brother".
After Ba Long, Huawei developed other chips. According to the order of birth, Kirin is the third, Lingxiao is the fourth, Asen is the fourth, and Kunpeng is the fifth.
Then Xiaomi came in. In 2022, Guo Song Electronics was founded, focusing on the research and development of mobile phone SoC. Three years later, it launched 2855438+0 on Xiaomi 5C, and then the Guo Song electronics team in charge of Xiaomi chip was split up, and a new company, Fish Semiconductor, was established and became independent. In the first half of this year, Xiaomi released the 2855438+0 chip, which was installed in Xiaomi's first folding screen mobile phone.
In addition to Huawei and Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo have been increasing their investment in chip technology in recent years.
In February 2022, OPPO 100% Shanghai Jinsheng Communication Technology Co., Ltd. was incorporated. This company is regarded as the beginning of OPPO's investment in semiconductor field. In 2022, the chip R&D project of OPPO Shoupu Technology (Shanghai) was officially signed. In August last year, the company was renamed as Zheku Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., and its registered capital increased from the previous 50 million yuan to 65.438 billion yuan.
At the beginning of this year, it was reported that Zheku ISP chip was already streaming, and it is expected to be carried on the flagship mobile phone released in the first half of next year. However, OPPO did not publicly respond to the details of the self-developed chip.
Vivo X70 series mobile phones released by vivo tomorrow will be equipped with self-developed chip V 1, which will be built by a research and development team of 300 people for about 24 months, so as to realize the cooperative work of self-developed image chip and main chip software algorithm.
Hu Baishan, executive vice president of vivo, told reporters in a previous interview that vivo will focus on focusing algorithm, IP conversion and chip architecture design, and manufacturing links such as chip streaming will be handed over to partners.
According to the global patent database of Wisdom Bud, at present, Huawei mainly focuses on processors, memory, communication technology and baseband chips, while Xiaomi focuses on power management chips, wireless charging and fingerprint identification. Oppo focuses on fingerprint chips, ptz and driver chips, and vivo has many layouts in the fields of photosensitive chips, ptz modules, communication technology, fingerprint chips and so on.
In terms of quantity, the patent applications of Huawei, Xiaomi, oppo and vivo in the related fields of mobile phone chips are 390 1, 70 1, 1 and 658 respectively, among which the invention patents are 1, 525, 30 1 and 358 respectively.
The self-developed chip is still in the investment period. It is too early to talk about "substitution"
Every generation of communication technology changes are accompanied by the reshuffle of mobile phone brands, and the chip manufacturers behind mobile phones will also be re-divided. The baseband chip of 5G smart phone bears the heavy responsibility of competing for the right to speak of a new generation of mobile terminals. However, due to multiple factors such as technology and market, only Qualcomm, Samsung, Huawei, MediaTek and Zhanrui can compete with it.
However, after Huawei's manufacturing links were limited, there were only four mobile phone chip players left.
Although mobile phones have begun to try to develop their own chips, the research and development of 5G core baseband chips still depends on two chip design companies, Qualcomm and MediaTek.
The reason is that from the cost point of view, chips are capital-intensive industries. With the continuous evolution of technology, the R&D cost of advanced chip mobile phones has increased exponentially. If there is not a large number of users to dilute the cost, the chip cost will skyrocket. Huawei has revealed to the media that the R&D cost of the 7-nanometer Kirin 980 far exceeds the industry's estimated $500 million. One of them, Zhan Rui, told the reporter that the R&D cost of 5GModem is hundreds of millions of dollars, the optical film is particularly expensive, and the team continues to invest. Thousands of engineers took part in the project.
There is a patent wall in front of the American headquarters in Qualcomm. A person from Qualcomm once told reporters that in the basic research and development of digital communication, Qualcomm has invested more than 5 1 billion dollars in R&D, and insists on investing 20% of its fiscal year income in R&D every year.
According to the global patent database of Wisdom Bud, Qualcomm and its affiliated companies have published 6,257 patent applications in related fields of mobile phone chips, including 2,965 invention patents, accounting for 47%. Up to now, MediaTek and its affiliated companies have published 1249 patent applications in chip-related fields, including 776 invention patents, accounting for about 62%.
Judging from the total number of patent applications in the chip field, the number of patent applications in Qualcomm is much higher than that in MediaTek and mobile phone manufacturers, and the number is nearly twice that of Huawei. In addition, the proportion of invention patents in Qualcomm and MediaTek is higher than that of mobile phone manufacturers, and MediaTek is the only company that accounts for more than 50%.
"Not every company can benefit from the investment of mobile phone brands in chips. Even Samsung can't rely on Qualcomm for baseband technology, and the cost pressure of self-developed chips is very high. If the product sales fail to meet expectations, it will further hinder the iterative cost. " A person in charge of a chip manufacturer who did not want to be named told reporters.
From a technical point of view, the research and development of baseband chip in mobile phone chip is different from that of application processor (AP), which needs long-term accumulation. The head of the original Ziguang Zhanrui communication team once told reporters that "there are not only 5G in the 5G chip, but also support 2G/3G/4G at the same time. Without the accumulation of 2G to 4G communication technology, it is impossible to directly carry out 5G research and development. It takes at least five years for each communication to grow from scratch to stabilize. On the surface, the G rate seems to be very low, but in fact, the complexity is not low. Moreover, technology alone is not enough, and a lot of manpower and time are needed to cooperate with the global network for on-site testing. "
At the same time, it takes only three years to design a chip from algorithm to mass production, regardless of standards. To catch up with Qualcomm, it is necessary to shorten the iteration period, so every link needs to work together. Taking the division of labor as an example, we need standards, algorithm baseband chips, RF chips, physical layer software, protocol stack software and testing, and subdivide them into specific fields. The above-mentioned people said that team experience is ground out. It is not that the company can get 5G technology by recruiting a group of technical experts. You must also have relevant team experience. This team must be very tacit.
"The cost of making chips is too high, especially for mobile phone SoC. There are many modules. In addition to RF and WiFi, there are also many functional modules such as camera, display screen and fingerprint recognition. How do you make it a product with low power consumption and competitive cost, and then it can go to PK with the industry, which requires trial and error and constant iteration, and requires a lot of time, money and high-end talents. "
Judging from the overall development of integrated circuit talents, the demand gap of high-end talents is still huge.
According to the "Talents of Integrated Circuit Industry in China (2022 -2022)" compiled by China Electronic Information Industry Development Research Institute and China Semiconductor Industry Association, according to the current industry development trend and the corresponding per capita industry calculation, the demand for talents in the whole industry will reach about 744,500 around 2022, especially the leading and high-end talents are in short supply.
By the end of 2022, the degree will approve the addition of the first-class discipline of "Integrated Circuit Science and Engineering". In the first half of 2022, Tsinghua University, China University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen University of Science and Technology and other universities set up integrated circuit colleges one after another to increase the training of chip talents.
"Even students who graduated from Tsinghua University Microelectronics Institute will turn to finance or engage in interconnection. I think there have been too many opportunities to make money in China in the last ten years. It's hard to make chips, but it's not that easy to get money. " A person in charge of a domestic chip company once told reporters that it is too hard to make hardware such as chips and the income is not high. Many excellent students choose to engage in finance and interconnection after graduation.
In the industry's view, the rapid development of Internet in China in the past few years has also had a crowding-out effect on hardware industries such as chips to some extent. However, with China paying more and more attention to the whole process of chip design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, the chip industry will have a historic opportunity in the next few years.
The above is the content that life is too bitter in the Year of the Tiger in 2022, and it is about Huawei's sharing. After reading that 2022 is Hu Jin's fate, I hope it can help everyone!