Judging from the overall reaction of the science and technology circle, it is more natural to feel sorry for the forced suspension of Kirin chips, and at the same time, it is quite indignant and sympathetic to the situation of Huawei's mobile phone business. After all, for a long time, Kirin chip symbolized the peak level of mobile phone chip development in China.
However, in a tragic atmosphere, in this one and a half months, six chip companies have obtained permission from the US Department of Commerce and will continue to provide chips for Huawei. Does this change mean that the United States has made a certain turning point in suppressing Huawei? How does this trend affect Huawei's development? We may see the answer from Huawei's actions.
Speaking of chip stuck, you may think of the Kirin series of Huawei's mobile phone processor chips, but in fact this is just one of Huawei's HiSilicon chip product lines. The US sanctions against Huawei chips include all the chip design and production links of Huawei Hisilicon. These chip product lines mainly include the following six categories:
1, Hisilicon chip: mainly used for mobile terminal equipment, including high-end chips such as Kirin 990, Kirin 980, Kirin 970 and Kirin 960. In addition to the high-end 9 series, Kirin also has 6 series, 7 series and 8 series low-end chips. The latest Kirin 9000 chip adopts 5nm process.
2. Kunpeng chip: mainly aimed at the server field. Kunpeng 920 chip is completely independently developed by Huawei. Is the world's first 7nm data center ARM processor, mainly suitable for Huawei's Taishan server;
3. Rising chip: A processor oriented to the field of artificial intelligence, adopting its own Leonardo da Vinci architecture. Rising chips are divided into high-end and low-end series. The high-end is 9 10 (7nm process) and the low-end is 3 10 (12nm process). AI chip is one of the technical cores in the era of artificial intelligence.
4. Ba Long chip: Hisilicon's 5G baseband chip. At present, the latest one is Ba Long 5000 (7nm process) supporting 5G dual mode, which is mainly used for Kirin 980 and Kirin 990. Among them, Kirin 990 also launched a version that integrates Ba Long 5000 baseband chips;
5.plough chip: Hisilicon 5G base station chip, the industry's first core chip of 5G base station, is also the world's first chip with super-integration, super computing power and ultra-wideband spectrum, realizing the revolutionary change of AAU. The latest plough chip is 7nm process. The aforementioned 2 million 5G chips produced by TSMC for Huawei during the ban buffer period are referred to as plough chips.
6. Lingxiao chip: mainly used in routers. Hi565 1 chip is the industry's first 4-core 1.4GHz home routing processing chip, with built-in IPv6/v4 dual-stack hardware processing engine, which has obtained carrier-level certification; Support 256 connection nodes, and enhance and optimize the terminal position and interference through algorithms. This kind of chip does not require much process, and the 28nm process can already meet the demand.
At present, due to the ban of the United States, the top five of the above six product lines have basically stopped production. Among them, Kirin chip (mobile phone Soc chip), Baron 5000 (baseband chip) and lifting chip (artificial intelligence chip) directly affect Huawei's consumer electronics business (mobile phone, tablet, smart home and other electronic products), while plough chip directly affects the business of 5G communication equipment, and lifting chip also affects Huawei's industrial-grade artificial intelligence products. These three areas are Huawei's core business areas. Comparatively speaking, the server field is important but not urgent, while Lingxiao chip is basically unaffected.
As mentioned earlier, the US Department of Commerce approved six chip manufacturers to continue to supply, and everyone was very happy to see the comments of the news media. Looks like this is good news. But this is not the case.
For example, TSMC, the most concerned company, continues to provide chips to Huawei. It provides a 28nm process, which cannot meet the needs of the five chip product lines mentioned above, and the domestic wafer foundry level can also reach 28nm. To put it bluntly, this is something that everyone can do. Of course, it can't be said that it's useless. After all, this is a good thing for Lingxiao chip. Other products that AMD can provide are basically products whose "technical shelf life" is about to expire.
So in my opinion, the significance of this program in the United States is far greater than the actual significance. After all, first of all, this can't solve the problem of insufficient supply of Huawei's core chips-even if AMD chips are purchased, they can only stay or will soon be useless. What are you buying? Second, it cannot solve Huawei's basic needs in any key areas, such as Huawei's consumer business. If we agree that Qualcomm will sell chips to Huawei, it will be a solution for Huawei.
Recently, the United States has more clearly explained the prerequisite for "release"-"as long as these products are not used in 5G technology".
As we all know, Huawei's core needs in consumer business and communication equipment focus on 5G related components and chip products.
Therefore, the products that the United States allows to export to Huawei are actually products that Huawei does not have high demand at this stage or are related to its 4G business-this cannot solve Huawei's top priority.
Then it is obvious that the United States is not sincere in this move, so what is its intention? Just to disgust Huawei? Obviously not.
From the above, we can know two things: First, the most fatal defect of Huawei at present is that the chip cannot be produced, which will lead to the stagnation of Huawei's leading technological advantages; Second, the recent actions of the United States are not aimed at easing the confrontation with Huawei at all, but have other purposes.
One of the biggest purposes is to exchange space for time.
The space here refers to the absolute advantage that the United States has gained by virtue of its decades-long technical strength ahead of China in the semiconductor field, and its sphere of influence in the semiconductor field is far greater than that of China. Time refers to the time it takes for the United States or the 5G technology absolutely controlled by the United States to develop.
Of course, the United States is worried that China will start independent research and development after Huawei is sanctioned, but relatively speaking, the United States is more afraid that if Huawei is not sanctioned, Huawei will step on their shoulders to help China gain the core position in the era of 5G communication-so in fact, the United States is also taking a risk, and it wants to bet that American scientific and technological circles can take the lead in realizing 5G technology before China fixes advanced mask aligner technology.
In fact, the United States does have great advantages. At present, the main problems faced by Huawei or China Semiconductor include not only large-scale technologies and equipment involved in high-end mask aligner, but also chip design tools-design software, chip architecture and so on. And advanced technology-TSMC's progress depends not only on EUV, but also on their own technological research and development of manufacturing process.
Therefore, the choice before the American scientific and technological community is obvious at first: on the one hand, China needs to catch up with the technical level of a series of mask aligner-related enterprises such as ASML, Marco Lin Semiconductor and Texas Instruments (even because of the existence of patents, it has to take another road), catch up with the technical level of network architecture and IP cluster-related enterprises such as ARM and Intel, and catch up with the technical level of wafer foundry enterprises such as TSMC and Samsung; On the other hand, the United States only needs to catch up with Huawei's leading edge in the 5G field.
How many years will it take China to catch up with this gap? How long does it take in America? American elites hardly need to think about this problem. They are willing to take the risk. They don't believe that China can win this time, because in their eyes, China people are not as United as they were decades ago when "two bombs and one satellite" was invented.
In addition to this ultimate goal, another purpose of the United States is to further divide and cut Huawei's influence.
In fact, even if they pass the supply license, the products that these enterprises can provide are not many, so in my opinion, the so-called relief of the economic pressure of American semiconductor enterprises is far more symbolic than practical. What can this level of supply alleviate?
However, this behavior released a signal that the United States will no longer maintain rough interference in the semiconductor industry, nor will it continue to expand and "implicate", but at the same time it put forward an implicit condition-"You can't flirt with Huawei again".
The intention of the United States is obvious: in the future, you should adapt to a new era in which Huawei is gradually marginalized.
In other words, in order to ensure the ultimate goal of "exchanging space for time", the United States further weakened Huawei's scientific and technological strength.
This is an open plan and an idle one, but it is not necessarily useless.
Of course, if we look at this matter with optimism, there are other possibilities. For example, the United States is preventing our country from developing semiconductor-related technologies with the strength of the whole country and helping Huawei overcome all kinds of technical difficulties it needs, so its attitude has eased-the purpose is to slow down the army.
Then we should step up efforts to promote the technological development of chip autonomy.
According to the latest news, Huawei is planning to build a chip factory in Shanghai that does not use American technology. According to people familiar with the matter, the factory is expected to start manufacturing low-end 45nm chips, with the goal of manufacturing 28nm chips for "Internet of Things" equipment by the end of 202 1 and 20nm chips for its 5G telecom equipment by the end of 2022.
From this information, we can get at least three pieces of information.
First of all, the country is making a long-term semiconductor development plan.
Why do you say that? The key lies in the location of Huawei's factory. Shanghai is the most developed area of semiconductor industry in China. In Suzhou and Shanghai, the semiconductor-related industrial chain has a long-term development process. In the field of ICT, almost all domestic OEM, EDA software, packaging and testing manufacturers are concentrated in this field. At the same time, it is also the region that is most adjacent to the advanced technology and management level of international counterparts, where Huawei can make technological breakthroughs to the maximum extent without worrying too much about resource allocation. In addition, Shanghai's high-quality higher education level and scientific research talents can also help Huawei's development.
And let Huawei build here, we can also see that the country expects Huawei to play a leading role in the semiconductor field in the future, and Huawei can indeed bring some changes to industrial chain enterprises.
Second, Huawei's layout focuses on 5G related chip products.
This shows that Huawei has made considerable adjustments to its business after recognizing the facts. After that, Huawei's 5G business is expected to shrink its front line and temporarily return to China. However, Huawei's layout of 5G technology has not stopped. It is doing the research and development of the Internet of Things ecology, and has planned the production of chips. For example, the plan of independent chip production by IOT devices is left, and the short-term goal of process technology improvement is to realize the chip supply of 5G communication devices. This shows that Huawei will give priority to ensuring the supply of chips in the field of communication equipment.
Previously, Huawei's technical requirement for plough chips was 7nm, which Huawei could not break through on its own in the short term, so I think Huawei may also hope for independent research and development and technological breakthrough of domestic mask aligner enterprises while saving itself, which is also an opportunity for foundry companies such as SMIC.
Third, Huawei may have other plans on the mobile phone Soc chip, or choose tactical retreat.
You can't see anything about mobile phone chips from this information, so there are two possibilities here. One is that Huawei still hopes that the United States will allow Qualcomm to sell its high-end chips to Huawei, which is actually not impossible. After all, the American election is about to be settled, and there is a certain chance of a change. But this kind of "license" can't solve Huawei's strategic goal, so even if Qualcomm chips can be used, Huawei will only serve as a transition.
There is also a greater possibility-tackling high-end mask aligner technology and technology with domestic enterprises requires more time and technical input, but this is the most taboo tendency in the United States. Once China-related enterprises have made great progress in this respect, they will be under pressure from the United States, and even the United States will unseal Huawei before making a major breakthrough in China-differentiating domestic basic technology research and development, which is also worthy of vigilance.
This requires us to focus on and stick to our strategic goals.
Judging from the above three news items, Huawei's situation has actually improved substantially-the entire scientific and technological community in China, including the state power, has noticed our "shortcomings" and realized the necessity and importance of developing semiconductor technology.
Therefore, although Kirin stopped, Huawei did not stop, and Zhongke began to mobilize.
If China's semiconductor industry can rival or even rival the United States in five years, I think we will all be "grateful" for the US sanctions and attacks on Huawei and China's scientific and technological circles in the past two years. It is because of American sanctions that we "wake up" again.
Before these two years, the rising power of science and technology in China was actually impetuous. The prosperity at that time was more like castles in the air, but as insiders, we enjoyed it.
It was at this time that the United States forcibly poured a pot of cold water with ice slag on China enterprises. Although we were badly hurt, we finally woke up and saw many truths that we had never seen before-I think the current "technical oppression" is more similar to "paying tuition" from this level. Although the tuition is very expensive, we have not got nothing.
What we have to do now is to use the opportunity of waking up again and spare no effort to seize the opportunity to quickly make up for this "short board" discovered and pointed out by Americans.
At present, the big problem in China is that the voice in the market is too chaotic, and the support for the semiconductor industry at the national level has actually begun, but there are still many "noises" in public opinion. In my opinion, the state's support for the semiconductor industry is not only to help Huawei solve the problem of chip production difficulties, but also to support the entire 5G industry, so it is a major opportunity for many domestic technology companies, and Huawei is paying more companies because of its technological leadership at this stage.
We must realize the fact that it is impossible for China's 5G to take off by Huawei alone, and it is impossible for Huawei to arrange every aspect of semiconductor-related business by one company, because it is not only Huawei that benefits from developing semiconductor technology. Therefore, mask aligner enterprises should make some efforts to cooperate with the national high-performance mask aligner R&D route; EDA software companies should also contribute a little, chip architecture technology research and development companies should also contribute a little, and even mobile phone companies should vigorously support the basic technology research and development of domestic enterprises ... because in the future, catching up with the United States is bound to be a cluster model.
In short, the United States is encircling Zhongke with the strength of many companies in Silicon Valley, and Zhongke will inevitably produce many companies that can be compared with Silicon Valley. By then, Huawei will no longer face Silicon Valley, but may just be a company in Silicon Valley, such as Apple, so Zhongke will win.
Fortunately, there are such opportunities, market capacity and development environment in China, which is definitely a good opportunity for China science and technology enterprises.
Perhaps the only thing missing is an ancient spirit-the road is long and Xiu Yuan is Xi, and Xiu Yuan is Xi, so I will search for it.
Don't worry, as long as the direction is correct, as long as we persevere and unite as one, I think the United States will have a chance to experience the "China Speed" again.