Top 10 electronics news stories of 2017
Top 10 electronics news stories of 2017
2017 was a year of ups and downs in the electronics industry, and also a year of achievements. Review this year, the enterprise undercurrent surging, competing layout; Successive national policies promote development. In any case, the electronics industry remains as bright as the summer sun. At the same time, in this brilliant year, the electronic industry also happened a lot of events with great influence, which affected the direction of the electronic industry to a certain extent and promoted the development of the electronic industry. Here are the top 10 news events in the electronics industry in 2017.
☀ integrated circuit 4 national standard publicity
On January 16, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published four national standards in the field of integrated circuits, mainly focusing on memory testing. Meanwhile, the national Memory Base project with a total investment of us $24 billion has been officially launched in Wuhan East Lake High-tech Zone, and SMIC's 40nm ReRAM high-end memory chips have also been tested. It is understood that the project will be fully completed in 2020, the annual output value will exceed 10 billion US dollars, to achieve the large-scale development of China's IC memory chip industry "zero" breakthrough.
In addition, in order to get rid of the passive situation of "being controlled by others" in the electronic industry, the state also proposed in the policy of "National Integrated Circuit Industry Development Promotion Outline" that the growth rate of China's semiconductor industry should reach at least 20% by 2020. At the same time, "Made in China 2025" clearly put forward that China's chip self-sufficiency rate should reach 40% by 2020, and 50% by 2025.
Editorial Comments: The national policy has always been the beacon and benchmark of the industry development, how to better apply the national policy is also a problem facing each enterprise. With the continuous development of 5G, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and autonomous driving technologies, China's domestic chip companies will also usher in a turning point. On the one hand, the demand for chips in the global electronics market is increasing. On the other hand, Moore's Law trend is slowing, and China is expected to catch up with the world's advanced companies.
☀ Qualcomm has been sued by the FTC and apple
On January 17, the FEDERAL Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm, accusing the company of improperly maintaining its monopoly on semiconductor equipment. A few days later, Apple sued Qualcomm for $1 billion in royalties.
According to the lawsuit filed in federal court in California, Qualcomm is alleged to have used its position as a major supplier of mobile phone processors to impose onerous terms on handset makers. For example, unless customers accept Qualcomm's preferential patent licensing terms, they will sell processors to them, and if mobile phone manufacturers use chips of other brands, they need to pay high royalties to Qualcomm. In addition, the FTC alleges that Qualcomm unfairly competed in 2011 and 2012 by offering hundreds of millions of dollars in rebates in exchange for being the sole supplier of chips for iphones and ipads.
Apple's complaint, filed in a southern California court, accuses Qualcomm of overcharging for its chips and refusing to pay a promised $1bn refund. Apple has been in talks with the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC), an antitrust agency, and apple believes that Qualcomm's delay in issuing a refund is due to this.
The federal Trade Commission's lawsuit against Qualcomm is based on an antitrust investigation, while apple's lawsuit against Qualcomm is not about the amount of compensation. The most important thing is that the court's judgment on qualcomm will become an example of the industry and have a demonstration effect. It would be good for the industry to take this opportunity to make some changes to the patent-payment system.
☀ Luo fangde in China to invest billions of factory
On February 10th Grofonde, the world's second-largest fab-maker, announced that it would spend $10 billion to build a 12-inch fab in Chengdu, China.
, Romania's chief executive sanjay said: "China is the world's largest and fastest growing semiconductor market, and in the aspect of the integrated circuit industry development in sichuan power strong, talent, experience and set up global investment here the largest and the most advanced technological level of wafer plant is a very wise choice."
Editor's Comment: From the operating situation of Grofonde in recent years, it seems that it has no choice but to open a factory in China. Moreover, from the situation that it was rejected by several cities such as Chongqing, the gold content of the price offered by Grofand is worth evaluating. In addition, when Grofand realized commercial mass production of 14nm process and processed the latest Zen architecture chip for AMD, it still chose to import the 22nm SOI process into China in 2018 and put into production in 2019. This investment is more of a bet in China's current market, after all, smIC, Huawei and other manufacturers are not behind The strength of Grofonder.
☀ Korea will invest $415 million to promote the System Semiconductor program focusing on three areas
The Korean industry, government, and academia will invest 464.5 billion won (415 million U.S. dollars) to develop new technologies and nurture related professionals in order to strengthen the competitiveness of system semiconductors, the ministry said on April 1. The investment is focused on three areas: low energy, ultra-light, ultra-high speed, and materials and processes.
The Government and private companies will invest 221 billion won to develop low-energy, ultra-light and ultra-high speed semiconductor chips. Of this amount, 132.6 billion won will be used to develop advanced ultra-light sensors, low-energy silicon carbide power semiconductors, ultra-high speed memory and system integration design technology, and 4.7 billion won will be invested in ultra-high speed memory and system integration design technology.
The initiative aims to produce 1,880 specialists in system semiconductor research and development by creating a new master's program in the field of automatic semiconductor chips. About 13 billion won will be invested in training human resources this year. The government will also encourage cooperation between public and private companies to promote the system semiconductor project. The government has signed three memorandums of understanding with Samsung Electronics and SK. The government has also been signing other memorandums of understanding to encourage development in areas such as Internet of Things platforms.
Editor's Comments: In the face of the rapidly changing international semiconductor industry situation, the following suggestions are put forward for the development of China's current semiconductor industry: First, gather ideas, gather resources, take capital as the link to promote the coordinated development of the industry. At the same time, seize the opportunity of "post-Moore era", grasp the forward-looking key technology, strengthen the construction of system innovation capacity; Second, strengthen talent training, further enhance the strength of the domestic semiconductor industry, closely combined with the needs of industrial development to cultivate international, compound, practical talents.
☀ Chinese Academy of Sciences plans to spend 30 million yuan to develop 5G chips
On April 11, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) unveiled a 30 million yuan plan to develop 5G chips by itself. The plan said the CAS will spend 18 months to deploy 5G chips for the next generation of mobile communications, in order to build a 5G chip and key network technology innovation chain with independent intellectual property rights.
After 3 g, 4 g the latest generation of wireless communication technology, the significance of 5 g seems to be not too much description: Internet + is changing the human way of life, puts forward higher requirements on information exchange and transmission, high speed, large capacity, super connection and to the characteristics of 5 g wireless communication technology, just respond to this demand, or become a development trend in the future.
At the same time, for the reason why THE Chinese Academy of Sciences focuses on 5G technology, Yan Qing, director of the Science and Technology Promotion Development Bureau of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that as the core technology of the entire 5G network, THE 5G chip must be its own, otherwise the 5G era may still be controlled by others. The overall goal of "3G breakthrough, 4G synchronization, 5G leading" is also out of the question.
Although China's mobile communication technology started late, it has accumulated enough experience in the development process of 1G, 2G, 3G and 4G technologies. For the upcoming 5G technology, the government, enterprises and scientific research institutions have also attached great importance to it and made various arrangements. At the government level, the top-level layout of the frontier has been gradually carried out. Policies such as Made in China 2025 and the Outline of the 13th Five-Year Plan have been introduced to clarify the direction of 5G technology breakthroughs. At the corporate level, domestic leaders have won first-mover advantage. Huawei, ZTE, Datang and other leading domestic communication equipment enterprises attach great importance to the LAYOUT of 5G technology research and development, and have won industry recognition in standard formulation and industrial application.
☀ Domestic AI chip startup Cambrian has announced that it has completed A $100 million Series A funding round
On August 18, Cambrian, A Chinese AI chip startup, announced that it had completed A round of $100 million financing. The strategic investors are luxurious, including Alibaba, Lenovo and IFlyTEK. Cambrian has also become the first unicorn in the global AI chip sector, attracting extensive attention from the domestic and foreign markets.
It is understood that the Cambrian AI chip technology is mainly responsible for research and development production, the main products of the company for the 2016 release of Cambrian 1 a processor (Cambricon - 1 a), is a dedicated processor can deep learning of neural network, for smartphones, unmanned aerial vehicles, security monitoring, wearable equipment and terminal equipment of various types, such as intelligent driving, When running the mainstream intelligent algorithm, the performance and power consumption ratio exceeds the traditional processor. At present, 1A, 1H and other models have been developed.
Cambricon-1a processor released in 2016 is the world's first commercial deep learning dedicated processor. It is oriented to various terminal devices such as smart phones, security monitoring, drones, wearable devices and intelligent driving. When running mainstream intelligent algorithms, its performance and power consumption ratio comprehensively exceeds that of traditional processors. With ali Flying technology platform, Sunway Taihullight, Huawei Kirin 960 chip, Tesla, Microsoft HoloLens, IBM Watson and other outstanding representatives of emerging information technology at home and abroad at the same time was selected by the third World Internet Conference (Wuzhen) 15 "World Internet leading scientific and technological achievements". The company originated from the Institute of Computer Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, known as the cradle of China's computer industry.
Edit comments: with the rapid development and application of artificial intelligence, especially the wide application of neural network, put forward higher requirements for algorithm, and the emergence of all kinds of AI chip, not only solved the problem of the algorithm, but also eliminate the disadvantages of the traditional CPU for neural network arithmetic, the AI chip has become the focus of the industry.
☀ Dell is investing $1 billion in iot research and development
On October 10, Dell Technology Group announced the formation of a new Internet of Things division, and plans to invest $1 billion in the project's research and development over the next three years. At the same time, Dell hopes that the new iot division will better facilitate the integration of related products and services within Dell.
The new unit will be led by Ray O 'Farrell, cTO of Dell's VMware unit, and will focus on developing iot products and services as well as new technologies. Dell's companies, including EMC, Pivotal, VMware, and RSA, are all involved in iot technology to varying degrees.
Microsoft, Amazon and Google are all promoting public cloud data centers to provide data processing and storage for iot devices. In this context, Dell's move seems understandable. According to industry analysts, the Internet of Things is expected to save businesses and consumers $1 trillion a year in maintenance, service and consumables costs by 2022, a lure that will be hard for companies like Dell, Microsoft and Google to resist.
☀ Fujitsu out of semiconductor business! The 8-inch fab is sold by Anson Mae
On October 10th, Aizu Fujitsu Semiconductor Manufacturing, an 8-inch wafer factory owned by Fujitsu Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Fujitsu, will be sold to On Semiconductor of the US Semiconductor).
It is understood that Fujitsu Semiconductor has reached a consensus with On Semiconductor, on Semiconductor plans to acquire an additional 30% equity stake in the 8-inch fab on April 1, 2018, and increase its shareholding from the current 10% to 40%, and then plan to further increase its shareholding, aiming to increase to 60% in the second half of 2018 and 100% in the first half of 2020.
Fujitsu is also speeding up its withdrawal from non-core businesses such as semiconductors and concentrating its resources on IT services. Ansome is expected to pay about 2 billion yen for an additional 30 percent stake in the eight-inch fab, which also plans to expand capacity after it is incorporated into the company, the report said.
Editorial comments: The United States, South Korea and Taiwan and other three IC offensive too fierce Fujitsu semiconductor business shrinking year after year. In fact, the sales distribution of Fujitsu in 2015 also shows that its software products such as communication and solutions are the major part of its business. Semiconductors contributed just 5 per cent. It can be expected that anson mei after the acquisition of Fujitsu semiconductor, its strength or will be on a new level, the impact on the semiconductor industry will further increase.
☀ Qualcomm has been fined NT $23.4 billion in Taiwan
On October 11, Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) issued a statement saying that Qualcomm has a monopoly position in the baseband chip market of CDMA, WCDMA, LTE and other communication standards, and has refused to license to other chip manufacturers, or has threatened to harm market competition and violate Taiwan's Fair trade law. The fine of NT $23.4 billion (5.1 billion yuan) was the highest ever imposed by the Fair Trade Commission in Taiwan.
Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission said Qualcomm's illegal practices had been going on for at least seven years. During this period, Qualcomm received about NT $400 billion (about 87.15 billion yuan) of patent authorization in Taiwan, baseband chip sales of about US $30 billion (about 1980 billion yuan), illegally obtained goods or services sales of more than NT $100 million (about 21.79 million yuan), which is a major case.
Editorial Comments: Qualcomm was fined, in fact, the main reason is the unique business model, qualcomm once more before suffered an antitrust investigation and was sentenced to fines, which in 2014 and 2016 respectively in China and South Korea was RMB 6.08 billion and $854 million on the ticket, and the latter also hit a local antitrust punishment record in Korea. If Qualcomm's business model does not change, such fines will continue.
☀ Broadcom is offering $130 billion for Qualcomm
On November 6th Broadcom, the semiconductor giant, offered $70 a share in cash and stock to buy Qualcomm. Once this enticing non-binding proposal was issued, Qualcomm's internal discussion is continuous, its board of directors and finance is immediately on the proposal to start profit evaluation.A week later, Qualcomm gave a clear response, rejecting Broadcom's offer. At the same time, the board of directors also issued a statement, we believe that the company will continue to create more value in the semiconductor, Internet of things, autonomous driving and other fields in the future, with the advent of 5G era as an opportunity to drive better development of the company. The day after the broadcom response, Qualcomm announced a $150 million venture investment in nine Chinese companies, which seems to be indirect proof of its determination to resist being acquired, and also reflects its "confidence" in the future.
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