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The bumpy road of domestic chips
Today, I will take you back to the history of domestic chips and analyze the existing gaps.

0 1 bumpy road-mobile phone chip

Speaking of domestic self-developed chips, it seems that many people will talk about Huawei Hisilicon's Kirin chip. As early as 2009, Huawei Hisilicon's first mobile phone chip, Hi3611(K3V1), was launched, which was very immature. It was also from this mobile phone chip that the concept of domestic chip appeared.

In 20 12, Huawei hisilicon K3V2 chip was released, and the manufacturing process was 40nm. At that time, these chips were used in Huawei's own mobile phones such as D2, P2 and P6, and the research and development of Kirin chips was barely supported by forced mass production and crazy trial and error.

In 20 14, Huawei released Kirin 9 10. I believe everyone is familiar with this chip. Adopting 28nmHPM technology, the self-developed Balong7 10 baseband is integrated for the first time, which is used in Huawei P6S mobile phones. Because the technology and GPU (replaced by Mali) have been upgraded, it can finally meet people's daily needs. Subsequently, Huawei iterated an overclocked version of Kirin 9 10T, which was used on P7, and even the sales of this mobile phone were quite good.

Speaking of domestic chips, in addition to Huawei, there is another company that has to be mentioned-Ziguang, which was founded by Tsinghua University 1988. It has become the largest integrated circuit enterprise in China and the third largest mobile phone chip enterprise in the world, with advanced integrated circuit development technology in the world.

In 2000, the Ministry of Information Industry (the predecessor of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) issued "Document 18", which explicitly encouraged the development of software and integrated circuit industries for the first time. A group of overseas people are preparing to return to China to start businesses and make contributions to the development of integrated circuits in China.

That autumn, Chen Datong, who left the motherland 1 1 year, finally embarked on the road of returning to China to start a business. I traveled all over the country looking for a breakthrough in starting a business. Finally, I learned about the embarrassment of China's mobile phone chip in a dinner with Qu, then Vice Minister of Information Industry: "2G has no choice. If 3G is still like this, it is really impossible to explain to the country! "

In April, 20001year, Chen Datong and Wu Ping, an equally patriotic Kochi student, set up the exhibition (which was later acquired by Ziguang and merged with Rideco to become Ziguang Zhanrui), and assembled a luxurious team composed of more than 30 returnees. The product goal is to independently develop mobile phone baseband chips with independent intellectual property rights. Spreadtrum completed the design of 2.5G mobile phone chip in 6 months; 10 chip verification is completed; 12 months, initially completed the software integration and made a phone call; After another year of testing and various certifications, the chip began mass production within 24 months.

20 19 On February 26th, Zhanrui released the 5G communication technology platform-Makaru and its first 5G baseband chip-Chunteng 5 10. It is also fruitful and has developed rapidly in the smart phone industry.

At present, the domestic mobile phone chip technology has gradually matured, and the gap with foreign countries is getting smaller and smaller, and it has gradually become a leader in the chip industry. Therefore, we should have confidence in this respect, do not have the absurd theory of full moon abroad, seek truth from facts and look at the problem rationally.

02 Rough Road-Computer Chip

In recent years, the importance of computer chips is self-evident. At present, there are only two kinds of chips used by the public, Intel and AMD. In the early years, when AMD was immature, there was only Intel (so in the early years, Intel chips were often upgraded little by little, just like squeezing toothpaste, so it was named Toothpaste Factory). Therefore, we have been leeks for many years, but we can't bear it!

Speaking of the domestic computer chip "Godson", I believe everyone is familiar with it. Even just after its birth, it was called the light of domestic products, a milestone in the rise of domestic chips.

Godson is a general-purpose CPU independently developed by Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It adopts its own LoongISA instruction system and is compatible with MIPS instructions. From 200 1 to 20 10, Loongson has never established a company, but it is only a research group under the Computer Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences. In September 2002, Loongson 1 was released. In 2005, Godson 2 was released. But at that time, the technology was still immature, and there was a big gap with foreign chips. Foreign countries are too lazy to call Godson a chip, just a metal sheet.

It was not until 20 10 that Loongson Technology Co., Ltd. was established. In the same year, it lost more than10 million, but it still could not stop losing money. If China's computer chips are stopped, the future will be chaotic and dark.

It was not until 20 15 that Loongson Zhongke officially released its next-generation processor architecture products, including the independent instruction set LoongISA, the new-generation processor microstructure GS464E, the new-generation processors "Loongson 3A2000" and "Loongson 3B2000", the Loongson basic software and hardware standards and the community-based operating system LOONGNIX, so as to attract investment and achieve breakeven. It's really state support, or whoever changes will be dead!

At present, there are Loongson-related products on the market, but the cost performance is still very low, so consumers do not pay the bill at present.

03 uneven road-chip gap

At present, there is still a certain gap between domestic chips and foreign advanced technologies, mainly in three aspects.

The first is to make materials. Domestic silicon wafer production capacity is insufficient. Just like Gai Lou, there are not enough concrete and bricks. What about Gai Lou?

At present, domestic chips are also facing such a dilemma. The process of silicon ingot chip from design to manufacture is extremely complicated. Silicon is extracted from sand, made into silicon ingots, cut into silicon wafers, and then handed over to the chip foundry to make chips. In the process of extracting silicon from sand, the technical difficulty lies in the purity, which should not be lower than 99.99999%, that is, the purity of extracted silicon, and the impurity content should not exceed one in ten million. So there is very little that China can do at present, and it is stuck in the neck by the United States and other countries.

Second, the lack of EDA software technology. EDA software technology is a general electronic CAD software package successfully developed by combining the latest achievements of applied electronic technology, computer technology and intelligent technology, which can mainly assist the design work in three aspects, namely ic design, electronic circuit design and PCB design.

In fact, the essence of the chip is the ultimate circuit. Therefore, this technical defect makes domestic chips unable to meet the existing demand and often lags behind, resulting in the embarrassing situation that "others ran away before learning to walk".

At present, the three most famous EDA software companies in the world are Synopsys, Cadence of the United States and Mentor Graphics of Siemens. The three EDA software giants almost monopolized more than 90% of the global EDA market share. So the core technology is in the hands of foreigners, and I have always used it to describe leeks in China, so I can feel pain when typing.

Third, the technical status of mask aligner. Chip manufacturing needs extremely fine carving to complete, and the most important and essential one is lithography technology. Enterprises that can be manufactured in China, namely TSMC in Taiwan Province Province, are also restricted by foreign countries.

Nowadays, all high-end chips need EUV mask aligner. At present, only ASML, the Netherlands can provide EUV mask aligner for mass production, and the rest of mask aligner is only used for experiments. So this is a standard monopoly, completely subject to people.

04 bumpy road-the inevitability of striving to rise

In 2020, China's chip imports climbed to nearly 380 billion US dollars (equivalent to more than 2.4 trillion yuan), accounting for about 18% of the total domestic imports.

Moreover, the development of domestic chips is restricted, which leads to the stagnation of domestic software and hardware strength. Many foreign companies dominate the software and hardware market by testing new chip technology, especially by China people's necks, and then subcontract all the rest to developing countries such as China, and then sell the chips they produce to countries such as China at high prices to achieve capital monopoly. For us in the information age, it is simply fate that has caught our throat, but there is nothing we can do.

At present, domestic chips still face a lot of problems to be solved urgently, which should not be encouraged. Under the leadership of the country, domestic chips have been taking the road of steady development. Although the results may not be seen by ordinary people for many years, the foundation has been solid, and domestic chips will eventually take off among young people in the new era.

05 Rugged Road-Comparison

Taking Godson 3A4000 as an example, the 28nm process is quad-core, and the main frequency of Godson 3A4000 processor is as high as 2.0GHz. In addition, the architecture of Godson 3A4000 processor is upgraded to GS464V, which supports MIPS64 instruction set. On the basis of only 500 MIPS64 instructions, it has expanded more than 1000. Although it has great advantages in architecture, its main frequency is too low, and its strength is probably equivalent to that of Intel Core i5-3320M (although it can't be compared like this, it probably lets everyone know the current situation of domestic chips).

So brothers still have a long way to go, and the future will be even more difficult. Besides, will you pay for domestic chips?