On September 8, MediaTek, a mobile phone chip design company, launched a large-scale plan, in which the annual salary of master graduates reached NT$ 2 million (about 466,8 yuan) and the annual salary of doctors was NT$ 2.5 million (about 583,5 yuan).
However, even if the "attractive" salary is offered, in the past two years, it has become increasingly difficult for IC design chip companies to train outstanding talents. "Employees who left the company have jumped to OPPO, vivo, and even AI companies like Cambrian and Horizon, and some salaries have doubled directly." 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 order to form a self-developed chip team, in recent years, many mobile phone companies have arranged their interview places next to the offices of these chip companies. In the latest year, a mobile phone manufacturer offered the chip director of an ISP a monthly salary of 15, yuan and even an annual salary of 1.8 million yuan.
With the development of chips entering the "deep water area", the competition for "bottom technology" from R&D personnel to technology patent layout began to show a white-hot trend. According to the data provided by Wisdom Bud Global Patent Database to Finance, 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, head 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 1% of the reference design scheme, and mobile phone manufacturers could sell them with a slight change. In the last five years, the competition of mobile phones has become the core technology, that is, the competition of all industry consolidation capabilities. " The person in charge of a domestic chip company told reporters that from the trend point of view, 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 the history of mankind for more than 4 years. In essence, the demographic dividend is a dividend, a dividend and 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 are really called high-tech.
Take mobile phones as an example. Although China's mobile phone brands have occupied more than 5% of the world's total, whether and how to go on is a problem that must be considered for me now. But in fact, the answer is also very clear. The era of big opportunities is far away, and the business concept of opportunities is not only outdated, but also easy to get narrower and narrower.
judging from the history of self-developed chips for mobile phones, Huawei was the first company to join in, and it was also a company with greater achievements despite many detours.
In 27, when Huawei began to attack the chip solution, the internal R&D personnel likened it to climbing a snowy mountain, which needed to be conquered one step at a time. Ba Long is a snowy mountain located in Dingri County, with an altitude of 713 meters. Therefore, Ba Long became the name of the baseband chip in Huawei's chip family, and its qualifications were 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, Ascend is the fourth, and Kunpeng is the fifth.
then Xiaomi entered the company, and in 222, Songguo Electronics was established, focusing on the research and development of mobile phone SoC. Three years later, the surging S1 was launched on Xiaomi 5C, and then the Songguo Electronics team responsible for Xiaomi chip was split up to form a new company, Fish Semiconductor, and became independent. In the first half of this year, Xiaomi released the 澎湃 C1 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 December 222, Shanghai Jinsheng Communication Technology Co., Ltd., which is 1% owned by OPPO, was incorporated, and this company was regarded as the beginning of OPPO's investment in the semiconductor field. In 222, OPPO Shoupu Technology (Shanghai) chip research and development project was officially signed, and the company was renamed Zheku Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. in August last year, and the registered capital increased from the previous 5 million yuan to 1 million yuan.
At the beginning of this year, it was reported that Zheku ISP chip was already being streamed, which is expected to be carried on the flagship mobile phone released in the first half of next year. However, OPPO did not make a public response to the details of the self-developed chip.
The vivo X7 series mobile phone released by Vivo tomorrow will be equipped with a self-developed chip V1, which was built by a 3-person R&D team for about 24 months, realizing the cooperation between the self-developed video chip and the main chip software algorithm.
Hu baishan, executive vice president of vivo, told reporters in the previous interview that at present, vivo will focus on focusing algorithm, IP conversion and chip architecture design, and the production 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 processor, memory, communication technology and baseband chip, Xiaomi focuses on power management chip, wireless charging, fingerprint identification, etc., oppo focuses on fingerprint chip, head and driver chip, and vivo has many layouts in the fields of photosensitive chip, head module, communication technology and fingerprint chip.
in terms of quantity, the patent applications of Huawei, Xiaomi, oppo and vivo in the related fields of mobile phone chips were 3,91, 71, 1,64 and 658 respectively, of which 1,525, 31, 394 and 122 were invention patents respectively.
It is too early to talk about "substitution" when the self-developed chips are still in the investment period
Every generation of communication technology changes, accompanied by the reshuffle of mobile phone brands, at the same time, 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 in the world at present.
However, after Huawei's limited manufacturing links, there are only four mobile phone chip players left.
At present, mobile phones have begun to try to develop their own chips, but judging from the types of chips, a large number of research and development on 5G core baseband chips still need to rely on two chip design companies in Qualcomm and MediaTek.
The reason is that from the cost point of view, chip is a capital-intensive industry, and with the continuous evolution of technology, the R&D expenses of advanced chip mobile phones increase exponentially. If there is no large number of users to dilute the expenses, the chip cost will rise linearly. Huawei once revealed to the media that the R&D cost of the 7-nanometer Kirin 98 far exceeded the industry's estimate of 5 million US dollars. One of Zhanrui told reporters that the R&D cost of 5GModem is hundreds of millions of US dollars, and the optical flow film is particularly expensive, as well as the continuous investment of the team. There are thousands of engineers participating in the project.
and in Qualcomm, the headquarters of the United States, there is a patent wall at the door. A Qualcomm reporter once told reporters that Qualcomm has invested more than 51 billion dollars in basic research and development of digital communication, and insists on investing 2% of its fiscal year income in research and development 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 about 47%. However, MediaTek and its affiliated companies have published 1,249 patent applications in chip-related fields up to now, including 776 invention patents, accounting for about 62%.
In terms of the total number of patent applications in the field of chips, the number of patent applications in Qualcomm is much higher than that in MediaTek and mobile phone manufacturers, which is nearly twice that of Huawei. In addition, the proportion of invention patents in the total number of patent applications in Qualcomm and MediaTek is higher than that of mobile phone manufacturers, and MediaTek is the only company that accounts for more than 5%.
"Not every company can benefit from the investment of mobile phone brands in chips. Even Samsung can't rely on Qualcomm in baseband technology, and the cost pressure of self-developed chips is very great. If the sales volume of products can't 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), and it needs long-term accumulation. The head of the former Ziguang Zhanrui communication team once told reporters that "there is not only 5G in the 5G chip, but also it needs to support 2G/3G/4G at the same time. Without the accumulation of 2G to 4G communication technologies, it is impossible to directly carry out 5G research and development. And it takes at least five years for each communication to be developed from scratch and then stabilized. 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 it takes a lot of manpower and time to conduct on-site testing with the global network. "
At the same time, it takes 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. Just taking the division of labor as an example, it needs standards, algorithm baseband chips, RF chips, physical layer software, protocol stack software, and testing, which are subdivided 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. It must also have the experience of relevant teams. This team must have a very tacit understanding.
"The cost of making a chip is too high, especially for making a mobile phone SoC, there are many modules, besides radio frequency and WiFi, there are also many functional modules such as taking photos, displaying, fingerprint identification, etc. How to make it a product with low power consumption and competitive cost, and then go to PK with the industry requires trial and error and continuous iteration, which 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.
The "Talents in China Integrated Circuit Industry (222 -222)" compiled by China Electronics and Information Industry Development Research Institute and China Semiconductor Industry Association mentioned that according to the current industrial development trend and the corresponding per capita industrial calculation, the demand for talents in the whole industry will reach about 744,5 around 222, especially the leading and high-end talents are in short supply.
at the end of 222, the degree will approve the addition of the first-class discipline of "integrated circuit science and engineering". In the first half of 222, 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 the graduates from Tsinghua University Microelectronics Institute will switch to finance or engage in interconnection. I think in fact, in the last ten years in China, there have been too many opportunities to make money. It is very hard to make chips, but it is not so easy to get money. " A person in charge of a domestic chip company once told reporters that it is too hard to make chips and other hardware, and the income is not high. Many outstanding students choose to engage in finance and interconnection after graduation.
In the industry's view, the rapid development of China Internet in the past few years has also had a crowding-out effect on hardware industries such as chips to a certain extent. However, with the increasing emphasis on the whole process of chip design, manufacturing, packaging and testing in China, the chip industry will usher in a historic opportunity in the next few years.
the above is related to the 222 tiger life is too bitter, and it is about Huawei's sharing. After reading that 222 is Jin Hu's destiny, I hope this will help everyone!