The global market scale of this industry is less than 100 billion US dollars, and the net profit rate is less than 15%, but it can incite the semiconductor industry chain of 500 billion US dollars, which is regarded as a huge opportunity by domestic pioneers.
In March 2020, Wang Libin, deputy general manager of EDA giant Synopsys (Xinsi Technology) in China, decided to resign after working in EDA industry for 20 years, and founded the domestic EDA company "Zhang Xinhua" as the founder, chairman and CEO of the company.
He said that there are two reasons for leaving Xinsi Technology to start a business:
First, seeing that the country strongly supports the "domestic substitution" of EDA industry, he is very optimistic about the future prospects of EDA technology;
Another reason is that he believes that these opportunities can help Zhang Xinhua realize commercialization with the experience of upstream and downstream industries and market relations in the past 20 years and the understanding of customers' ideas and needs.
Together with Wang Libin, there are also Chairman of Guilun Electronics, Liang, co-founder of Xinhe Technology, and Li Yanfeng, founder and CEO of Bodaway. All three held important positions in Cadence, one of the three giants of EDA, and then resigned to start a domestic EDA company.
On June 6th last year, 10, after receiving government financial support, "Zhang Xinhua" founded by Wang Libin announced that it had won 1 100 million yuan Pre-A round of financing; 165438+1On October 9, Zhang Xinhua completed the Pre-A+ round of financing of nearly 100 million yuan; On February 9, 65438 completed the A round of financing of more than 200 million yuan, less than a month apart. Three rounds of * * * introduced many well-known funds such as Yunhui, Zhenge, Gao Rong, Gaoyou, Wuyuan Capital (formerly Chen Xing Capital), SMIC Juyuan and Songhe.
In addition to Zhang Xinhua, many domestic EDA companies have also "clustered" to raise funds this year. In April 2020, almost Lun Electronics announced the completion of several hundred million yuan Series A financing; In September, Guowei Silcore, a subsidiary of Guowei Group, announced the completion of financing of several hundred million yuan. Investors include government investment institutions, such as Xinxin Financial Leasing and Shanghai Semiconductor Equipment and Materials Industry Investment Fund.
It is no accident that capital heats up.
Back in 2065438+May 2009, the U.S. Department of Commerce said that Huawei was completely restricted from purchasing semiconductor components produced by American software and technology. Affected by this, the cooperation between EDA Big Three and Huawei has been terminated.
The overseas EDA giants refer to Synopsys, Cadence and Mentor (owned by Siemens), which account for more than 64% of the global EDA market share.
EDA tool is an indispensable component in chip IC design, and it is also the most upstream and barrier part in integrated circuit design. It covers all the processes of integrated circuit design, wiring, verification and simulation. Can be connected into extremely complex circuit diagrams, thus making powerful CPU and GPU chips.
Under the background of the continuous evolution of complex technologies such as AI and edge computing, the EDA industry with a scale of 10 billion dollars is becoming an important "cornerstone" to incite the 500 billion dollar semiconductor industry chain, and EDA is also called "the mother of chips" in the industry.
Therefore, the termination of cooperation between Huawei and the Big Three means that the chip will not have advanced domestic EDA software tools to match it, and Hisilicon will not be able to build the next generation of "Kirin Core". In the report, Dongxing Securities described EDA as "the sword of the United States that restricts Huawei", highlighting the importance of this technology.
Under the background that China's chip manufacturing ecology urgently needs to make up lessons, a game full of opportunities and adventures has quietly begun.
The current situation of EDA industry in China: the technology development is slow, the talents are scarce, and the whole chain cannot be formed.
According to public data, the EDA market in China in 20 19 was about 540 million, accounting for only 5.3% of the global 1025 million USD.
As the largest electronic component market in the world, the products of the Big Three EDA companies account for more than 85% of the domestic market share (actually close to 90%), and the production and sales of domestic EDA software account for less than 10%.
At present, domestic EDA software companies mainly include Huada Jiutian, Guowei Group, Zhang Xinhua, Boda Microelectronics, Xinhe Technology and Jielun Electronics. And the number and scale are very rare.
The reason behind this is that the EDA industry has high technical threshold, high cost elasticity and high industry concentration, which leads to the slow development of domestic technology and lack of talents, and it is impossible to form the whole chain of EDA tools, thus forming an embarrassing situation that China's ic design industry is increasingly inseparable from the EDA Big Three.
In fact, judging from the development of EDA industry, China has also experienced its heyday.
During the Cold War, under the pressure of China's EDA software technology being banned by Batumi, Panda System (Panda IC CAD System), the first integrated circuit CAD tool with independent intellectual property rights in China, was successfully developed in 1986, and was fully published in 1993.
This indicates that China's EDA system development has achieved a "zero" breakthrough, breaking the blockade of foreign EDA tools in China and laying a solid foundation for the development of China's integrated circuit design industry.
Once the panda system was released, it caused great repercussions in the market. Because the price is only110 of similar products, American chip manufacturers once chose "Panda System".
However, with the dissolution of Batumi and the lifting of the embargo, in 1995, three overseas EDA giants entered the China market on a large scale, and gained market share quickly with the strategies of mature technology, low price, free gift and multi-party cooperation. In addition, China began to actively promote the globalization of WTO, and the strategy of "making is better than buying" kept domestic EDA in silence for thirteen years.
Although in 2008, the state launched a major special program of "Nuclear High Foundation", the first batch of domestic EDA enterprises such as Huada Jiutian and Core Vision were established one after another and received key support. But EDA is a high-tech industry with long investment cycle and low profit rate. China lacks long-term capital, talents and industrial chain support, and the development of EDA in China is still struggling.
For example, in the past ten years, Huada invested less than 500 million yuan in R&D in nine days. However, the three overseas EDA companies have made great progress. From 2065438 to 2008, Xinsi invested as much as/kloc-0.08 billion USD, and Cadence invested about 870 million USD. The accumulated R&D capital invested by the two companies exceeds 127 billion yuan, which is very different.
On the acquisition level, in the field of digital EDA, the Big Three acquired hundreds of companies and obtained hundreds of EDA tools for the main process of SoC design.
In China, due to the late start of EDA industry, the concept of "making is better than buying" missed the opportunity to support the war in the fierce competition. Although there has been some development in analog IC, it is almost zero in digital EDA.
At present, domestic EDA tools are scattered and cannot provide a complete tool chain, while international EDA companies generally provide a complete set of tools for chip companies.
The person in charge of the chip downstream manufacturers interviewed said that the EDA tools of the Big Three will still occupy the mainstream of the market in the next decade, and the domestic EDA technology will not keep up with the "substitution".
In fact, because there is still a big gap between domestic EDA and American EDA as a whole, new EDA, new IP, new technology and PDK promote and integrate with each other, it is difficult for original customers to easily replace EDA software.
Therefore, the future of domestic EDA imagined by many entrepreneurs has become a "bubble bet".
Some insiders also bluntly said that under the complicated and changeable international situation, some domestic EDA enterprises fish in troubled waters and there is a certain market bubble.
On May 19, 2020, the Shanghai Stock Exchange accepted the listing application of Core Vision (the full name of the company is Beijing Core Vision Software Technology Co., Ltd.) in the science and technology innovation board, which marked the first shot of domestic EDA enterprises in the science and technology innovation board.
However, 227 days later, on February 3, last year, 65438/kloc-0, the IPO review of the core technology innovation board was terminated. The reason behind it may be related to the fact that its arrears of 5.57 million invoices have not been fully returned. In addition, the company's core technology is controversial, and the behavior of participating in the shareholders' meeting after withdrawing from the investment of the shareholding company, or suspected of violating the rules, has affected the company's listing process.
Dr. Ding Ke, Chairman of Core Vision Technology, responded that after the audit was terminated, the company had no plans to restart its listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board for the time being.
"The core of EDA industry is intellectual property, but domestic EDA companies don't pay much attention to it. I stepped on the pit if I was not careful. In this case, many companies will cooperate with the Big Three, so it is impossible to talk about pure domestic EDA. " The above-mentioned insiders said.
In addition, in terms of talents, China lags far behind the Big Three.
According to public information, there are about 1.500 EDA software development engineers in China, among which about 1.200 people work in the R&D center of China, an international EDA company, and only about 300 people actually do research and development for local EDA. In contrast, Xinsi Technology alone has more than 7,000 R&D personnel, of whom more than 5,000 are engaged in EDA research and development, and most of the core talents in the industry work in the Big Three.
Shuai Hongyu, co-chairman and president of Guowei Group, pointed out that there are almost no EDA-related training directions and courses in China universities so far, and almost no papers in related fields have been published in China since 20 10. Only 1/3 of the students in the integrated circuit industry have entered the relevant industries after graduation, and even fewer have knowledge and interest in EDA.
He emphasized that the main reason behind the shortage of EDA talents in China is that the "Industry-University-Research" strategy of integrated circuits has not kept up, which is the core problem to be solved urgently in the industry.
Future opportunities of domestic EDA: 8-inch market demand, overtaking opportunities in corners under domestic substitution, and new ideas support.
"Although the market share of EDA is occupied by the Big Three, domestic EDA definitely exists and will develop." There are many industry analysts.
In fact, the research report released by Founder Securities pointed out that although EDA tools are monopolized by international enterprises in the field of analog/digital mixed/digital chip EDA and the whole process design platform, domestic EDA opportunities are more based on point tools and gradually develop from point to surface.
With the shortage of MEMS(8-inch) wafers and strong demand, domestic EDA faces new opportunities.
Ying (Chen), Vice President of Shanghai Guowei Core Branch, has a strong demand for non-high-end (low-end) chips in automotive electronics, FPGA, driver chip, fingerprint identification, power management, MOSFET, microcontroller (MCU) and other fields, and the downstream 8-inch wafer manufacturing technology is very mature, which has shown a situation that the market is in short supply. Therefore, this market has great potential and is the core force point of domestic EDA tools.
"With the prosperity of AI, 5G, industrial Internet, automotive electronics, blockchain and other fields, many unique IC design requirements that EDA tools have not yet met have been put forward, which is precisely a new opportunity for domestic EDA tool manufacturers."
Silson is a local EDA company in the field of prototype verification and simulation system. 20 18 was acquired by Guowei group in June, and Silson was renamed as "Guowei Silson".
Chen stressed that although the design of advanced process IC is still dominated by the Big Three EDA, it is imperative to make domestic EDA. Especially in the process of 40nm and 28nm, China enterprises have mastered or will master it soon. "The functional verification that Si Er Core is doing belongs to the front end, which is relatively independent of the manufacturing process. Especially in rapid prototype verification, Silcore has accumulated 17 years, comparable to the EDA Big Three. "
This is also a corner overtaking opportunity that China enterprises seek under the domestic substitution.
Wang Libin said that at present, in terms of artificial intelligence and cloud technology, domestic EDA can stand on the high-tech starting point of today's technological development and innovate, integrate and reconstruct EDA software and hardware frameworks and algorithms. He believes that it is difficult to innovate for a long time under the monopoly of the Big Three, while domestic EDA enterprises are in a state of "traveling lightly" and "completely possible" to surpass the world giants.
In order to cope with the international situation and the challenge of EDA giants, domestic enterprises are also constantly moving frequently.
In 20 19, at the most influential DAC conference in the field of electronic design in the world, four China ed a manufacturers, Huada Jiutian, Guangliwei, Jilun Electronics and Xinhe Technology, made a joint appearance, and launched a variety of EDA products, showing the strength of China in the field of EDA to the world.
At the end of the same year, Quanlun Electronics acquired Bodaway to further integrate superior resources. Lanhaiwei strives to find niche customer groups, avoid the Red Sea and look for the Blue Ocean.
In addition, the giants are still expanding their layout in China, constantly promoting localization and "Industry-University-Research" support, and forming more considerations by supporting domestic EDA.
From 65438 to 0994, Xinsi Technology donated 20 sets of design and compilation software to Tsinghua University in the Great Hall of the People, with a total value of about 5 million US dollars. Subsequently, the company and Tsinghua established "Tsinghua University-Xinsi Technology High-level Electronic Design Center" and began to promote the cultivation of EDA talents in China.
On 20 18 and 20 19, Xinsi Technology established two joint ventures, Xinsi Source and Quanxin Zhizao respectively. The former aims at strengthening local cooperation in the field of chip ip, helping local fabs and design enterprises to realize independent research and development and master core technologies. The latter aims to strengthen local cooperation in the field of EDA in manufacturing industry and promote domestic technological capabilities.
Ge Qun, Senior Vice President of Xinsi Technology and Chairman of China District, all these efforts made by Xinsi Technology, whether in personnel training, technical support or capital cooperation, are aimed at solving the pain points of the chip industry in China. At this point, Xinsi is consistent with the initial intentions of other EDA companies in China.
Ge Qun emphasized that in the transition period of China's digital society, Xinsi will empower more scientific and technological applications with a new generation of EDA root technology facing the future, and promote the sustainable development of the whole chip industry. "EDA industry needs to get through the internal and external circulation, and the whole industrial chain will promote each other and develop synergistically to form a complete ecosystem, so that there will be better development space."
At present, the battle of EDA "domestic substitution" seems endless.
From (Phoenix Technology Channel)