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Domestic semiconductor IP ushered in a turning point, analysis of the advantages and opportunities of SingDong Technology

As PCs move towards the mobile phone industry, integrated circuit technology continues to upgrade, chip design complexity increases, and R&D resources and costs continue to increase, prompting the continuous refinement of the global semiconductor industry's division of labor, and the IP industry has emerged as the times require.

IP refers to those design modules that have been verified, reusable, have certain deterministic functions and independent intellectual property rights in integrated circuit design, and can be transplanted to different semiconductor processes. Chip companies can purchase such IP to achieve a specific function. This development model similar to "building blocks" greatly shortens the development cycle of the chip, saves design costs, and improves the performance and reliability of the chip while reducing the difficulty of chip design. Sex.

From the perspective of the global IP market, IBS predicts that the global semiconductor IP market will increase from US$4.6 billion in 2018 to US$10.1 billion in 2027, with a growth rate of 120% and an average annual compound growth rate of 9.13%. On the other hand, China has become the world's largest semiconductor consumer market, and demand growth continues to be strong. In the face of huge demand, the current supply of domestic integrated circuits is seriously inadequate. According to Ye Shengji, chief engineer and deputy secretary-general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the self-sufficiency rate of domestic semiconductors in 2020 is less than 15%, and the degree of dependence on imports is still high.

Therefore, under the dual factors of market space and development status, the demand for IP localization is urgent.

In this context, the "2021 Domestic IP and Custom Chip Ecological Conference" with the theme of "Cooperate to Create a Core Ecological and Win-Win" was held in Shanghai on July 6. This conference is hosted by China's leading enterprise in high-end IP and chip customization, SingDong Technology. It is the first industry ecological conference in China that focuses on semiconductor IP technology and product cooperation.
The conference brought together thousands of industry experts and business representatives to discuss and share the upstream and downstream links from IP, EDA, design services, foundry, packaging and testing, complete machines, cloud computing, etc., to explore new paths for the development of the IP industry. .

The advantages and opportunities of Xindong Technology

During the event, Ao Hai, President of SingDong Technology Co., Ltd., brought a theme sharing of "From design to mass production, domestic one-stop IP and customized services empower high-end chip localization", demonstrating SingDong's key IP technology Targeting overseas giants and surpassing certain high-performance IPs. The full set of high-speed IP cores and ASIC customization capabilities covering the world's 6 major generation factories through 15 years of hard work and covering the world's 6 major generation factories have demonstrated the innovative achievements of domestic independent core technologies. And empowerment.

For Chiplet, with the continuous development of integrated circuit technology, the complexity of chip design continues to increase. IP with different functions (such as CPU, memory, analog interface, etc.) can be flexibly selected for different processes for production, so that computing performance can be flexibly balanced And cost, to achieve the optimal coordination of functional modules without being limited to the fab process. At the same time, Chiplet is a new technology that can improve the economy and reusability of IP modules, and its development has expanded business flexibility and development space for IP suppliers.

According to Omdia data, the global Chiplet market size in 2018 was US$645 million. It is estimated that the market size will reach US$5.8 billion in 2024, with an average annual compound growth rate of 44%, and it is expected to gradually expand to the entire semiconductor market. Chiplet is bringing new imagination to the IP industry

At the summit, Gao Zhuan, Director of High-speed Parallel Port Technology of SINGLE Technology, also shared the relevant content of "High-performance DDR Series IP Technology Full Analysis", introduced the evolution of DQ from 4Gbps to 24Gbps, and demonstrated the only highest level GDDR6/6X IP in the world. Technology, and the only domestic HBM2e/3 and DDR5/LPDDR5 series technology. At the same time, Chen Liankang, Director of Serial Technology of SINGLE Technology, also brought a series of in-depth interpretations of 32/56/112G multi-standard protocol SerDes solutions, and shared the international cutting-edge USB, server PCIe5/4, SATA, RapidIO, HDMI high-definition Transmission technology and many other domestic leading technologies.

It is not difficult to analyze. With the current industry changes and trends, the current consumer electronics industry represented by smartphones has gradually reached its peak. The new growth momentum of IP sales is shifting to data-centric applications, and higher-speed interface protocols have emerged. The interface IP market has developed rapidly.

According to IPnest data, the interface IP market is expected to maintain a relatively high growth rate in the next five years, reaching 1.8 billion US dollars by 2025. The report also pointed out that the growth momentum of interface IP mainly comes from the demand for data-centric applications, hyperscalar, data centers, storage, wired and wireless networks, and emerging artificial intelligence. All these applications require higher and higher bandwidths to meet the needs of data exchange, thereby promoting the growth of interface protocols such as PCIe, Ethernet, SerDes, and memory controller IP.

How to build IP ecology and unique competitiveness

How to ensure rapid integration of various IPs and rapid mass production of products on the market is a common pain point for many chip companies. Therefore, IP competition is not only a competition of technology, but also a competition of reliability and differentiated services. Therefore, for chip companies, choosing IP vendors with rich process experience, close to customer needs, strong customization capabilities, flexible business models, and risk reduction has become a key link in achieving chip differentiated competitive advantages. This is precisely the advantage of local IP manufacturers for overtaking in corners.

Take the unique one-stop IP and chip customization service of Core Motion Technology as an example, covering 6 major foundries from 0.18 micron to 5 nanometer process nodes, PPA optimization can be carried out according to customer application scenarios, and rapid turnkey integration can be achieved in one step , It is possible for domestic chips to achieve high reliability, high cost performance, low BOM cost, and information security.

While meeting the international general standards, the core technology IP can also optimize the area, power consumption and other PPA according to the customer's application scenarios, and complete turnkey and rapid integration in one step to successfully escort customer products throughout the process and achieve a differentiated competitive advantage in chips.

On the other hand, the competitiveness of IP companies, in addition to the uniqueness of each technology and service, ultimately depends on the ability to establish an ecosystem. The reason why Arm is able to become the core factor of the king in the mobile era is that in addition to core IP such as CPU and GPU architecture, it also lies in the establishment of an integrated ecosystem of IP-chip-applications with partners, thus forming high barriers.

IP requires long-term technology accumulation and continuous R&D investment. It also tests the business strategy and capabilities of enterprises. my country's semiconductor IP share is relatively low. In addition to the technical uniqueness of each IP company, the more important thing is whether it can establish an ecological capability and establish an upstream and downstream ecosystem.

This is also the goal and value of this conference. More than a dozen exhibition and negotiation areas were set up at the event. Many guests took actual needs and conducted one-stop cooperation negotiations with exhibitors on IP, design services, foundry and packaging and testing services, which contributed to upstream and downstream cooperation. The communication between industrial resources and the promotion of business cooperation.

At the same time, with the evolution of advanced manufacturing processes, the reduction in line width has greatly increased the number of transistors in the chip, and the design has become increasingly complex. Integrated circuit design has entered the SoC era, and the number of IPs that can be integrated in a single chip has increased significantly. According to the IBS report, taking the 28nm process node as an example, the number of integrated IPs in a single chip is 87. When the process node evolves to 5nm, the number of IPs that can be integrated exceeds 200. The increase in the number of IP that can be integrated on a single chip provides new space for more IP to be reused in SoC. In order to speed up the time to market, IP reuse, software and hardware co-design, and ultra-deep submicron/nano-level design are used as technologies The supporting SoC has become the mainstream direction of today's VLSI. At present, most SoCs in the world are designed based on a variety of different IP combinations. IP is an indispensable element in the design and development of integrated circuits, which has promoted the further development of the semiconductor IP m