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Zheng Li: in the post Moore era, packaging has become a precision engineering of Microsystem integra

Hits:1417 Date:2020-05-25

The financial report of long-term electric technology, the leading semiconductor product manufacturing leader in China, has issued financial reports recently. The operating income in 2020 will reach RMB 26.46 billion, an increase of 12.5% year-on-year. If the impact of accounting standards changes is excluded, the annual growth in the same caliber is 28.2%. The net profit achieved in 2020 is RMB 1.3 billion, which is more than twice the total net profit of the company in 17 years after listing. In the first quarter of 2021, good results were also achieved, with revenue of about 6.712 billion yuan, an increase of 17.59% year on year; Net profit was 386million yuan, an increase of 188.68% year on year. What are the main drivers behind these bright results? How should semiconductor manufacturing enterprises develop and build core competitiveness under the current external environment《 China electronic news reporter exclusively interviewed Zhengli, director and chief executive of Changdian Technology Co., Ltd.

Adhere to the road of internationalization and specialization

Generally speaking, semiconductor market has strong correlation with the overall economic situation. However, since the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak has had a significant impact on the global economy, the semiconductor industry seems to have been not affected, but on the contrary, it has gone out of a strong shortage market.

In view of this phenomenon, Zheng Li pointed out that the shortage of chips in this round is the result of the joint action of many factors. First, the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak has promoted the development of the home economy and accelerated the global digital transformation. The demand for cloud services, servers, laptops, games and health care has been increasing. 5G, Internet of things, automobiles, artificial intelligence and computer learning have been developing rapidly, which all have promoted the market's demand for chips. Secondly, the novel coronavirus pneumonia has hit the global supply chain, exacerbating the contradiction between supply and demand. In contrast, China has resumed work earlier, which has made Chinese manufacturers gain more market opportunities, but also exacerbated the domestic supply tension. Another important factor is that in recent years, the development of semiconductor industry in China has played a very positive role in promoting the semiconductor industry, both the support of policy and the investment of social capital, and also contributed to the hot demand of the market to some extent.

Thanks to the overall semiconductor market environment, the semiconductor manufacturing industry has achieved good performance, full orders and short supply capacity. This is only one of the reasons why long-term electric technology has achieved bright performance. Zheng Li stressed that the reason why the company can achieve such a good result is related to both external and internal factors. On the one hand, the global semiconductor market is short of goods, and the whole industry is in a boom period, which s good conditions for the company's profit; On the other hand, in the past two years, under the strategic guidance of the new board of directors, the long-term technology management team has actively optimized and integrated global resources, and through professional and international management, it has made all operational indicators healthy and good, laying a solid foundation for the company's profit development“ Adhering to the international and professional road is an important strategy for the development of long-term electric technology to a first-class international integrated circuit enterprise. " Zheng Li said.

Data show that long-term electric technology has six integrated circuit product production bases and two R & D centers around the world, and has business institutions in more than 22 countries and regions, with more than 3000 patents, nearly 6000 engineers and more than 23000 employees. In terms of application market layout, long-term electric technology focuses on 5g communication, high-performance computing, automotive electronics, high-capacity storage and other application fields. In view of the advanced packaging technologies such as SIP, WL CSP, FC, ewlb, Pip, pop, 2.5D packaging required in these fields, large-scale mass production has been realized. Long distance electric technology plans and implements the early-stage import type R & D in the next 3-5 years, which has been recognized by major global customers and honored by many customers including ti.

Zheng Li also expressed confidence in the future development of the company“ In recent years, as a manufacturing enterprise, long-term electric technology has constantly laid a solid foundation, especially in the improvement of lean production capacity, so we have the confidence to ensure the sustainable development and progress of the enterprise. " Recently, in response to market demand and industrial trend, long-term electric technology established "design service center" and "automobile electronics business center", further strengthened its technological innovation ability, and committed to promoting the collaborative development of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and carrying out all-round technical cooperation, thus driving the development of the whole industry.

Develop three technologies and build core competitiveness

With Moore law facing many bottlenecks and advanced technology approaching the physical limit, it is generally accepted that the importance of manufacturing process of semiconductor products is becoming increasingly prominent, and advanced packaging is expected to become an important development direction of semiconductor technology in the next stage. This is both an opportunity and a challenge for all semiconductor manufacturing enterprises.

Zheng Li said that from the whole industry, the previous traditional packaging test in the semiconductor industry chain is not very important link. But in the post Moore era, it is no longer simply a hero of dimensionality with line width, line distance and integration, but more consideration is given to how to improve system performance and improve the integration of the whole system. Packaging testing links in the whole industry chain innovation ability and value are higher and higher.

To seize this opportunity, the first task of enterprises is to integrate industrial resources, actively promote the layout in the field of advanced packaging, increase the R & D investment in advanced packaging technology and products, and promote the realization of mass production in scale. According to Zheng Li, long-term technology will build core competitiveness in three technical directions. One is the AIP package for RF devices. With the development of 5g, wifi-6e and other communication technologies, the communication frequency band is shifted to high frequency, the development of full spectrum access, large-scale antenna and carrier aggregation, which puts forward new and higher requirements for the performance and design of RF devices, which not only improves the design difficulty of RF components, but also improves the value of single unit. There is a wide development space for AIP packaging and other technologies. Second, wafer level packaging for high performance computing. Moore's law has been pushed to 5 nanonodes, and it becomes more and more difficult to continue to slow down the evolution speed. The later packaging processes such as fan out and WLCSP become more and more important for the design and manufacture of high performance computing chips. Third, SIP system level packaging technology. With the further development of electronic products towards miniaturization and multi-function, the chip size is smaller and smaller, and more and more integrated chips are available. SIP packaging is one of the best choices to continue Moore's law.

"Long term electric technology focuses on 5g communication, high performance computing, automotive electronics, high capacity storage and other applications. The development and mass production of the above technologies will make the enterprise have stronger core competitiveness." Zheng Li pointed out.

However, one of the important problems is that wafer manufacturers such as TSMC and Intel are also actively developing advanced packaging. How should professional packaging agent enterprises cope with such development trend? In response, Zheng said that this just proves that advanced packaging is very important, so that so many leading semiconductor enterprises will be attracted to join. This also firm the determination of relevant practitioners to continue to invest and operate in advanced packaging field. At the same time, we also see that in the semiconductor field, the trend of professional division cooperation will not change, so both wafer manufacturing enterprises and packaging agents have their own market space for development. For enterprises, the key is how to form their own core competitiveness.

Keep a cautious mind and avoid "making fast money"

How can the domestic IC product manufacturing industry develop better under the current market environment? Zheng Li pointed out that the current packaging is not only a simple process of sealing the chip into the shell, but also dozens of processes are needed to make the connection and interconnection interface of the chip, so that each functional module can run organically, even extend to the wafer stage. The packaging is actually a micro system integrated precision engineering, and the "chip manufacturing" is used to describe the sealing measurement more appropriate. This requires people who have invested in this field to have stronger determination and confidence, "bench should sit for ten years, and spend ten years" polishing a technology, rather than taking the thought of getting a hand and going, making fast money. Investors who have entered the semiconductor field should not be eager to expand their scale, but make their own acteristics. Only if such enterprises can get sustainable development, can they help the whole Chinese semiconductor industry.

In addition, for the current market lack of core and capacity tension? Zheng Li also reminded employees“ Although there are many news about the lack of core in the market, practitioners must keep calm and pay attention to circulation channels and inventory level. In the past few decades, there has been a long-term cyclical change of industry prosperity in semiconductor market. Demand growth - shortage - expansion - overcapacity - industry downward - elimination of excess capacity, which leads to insufficient supply, recovery of demand, and new cycle of industry. Nowadays, there are many new practitioners in the semiconductor field. Most of them have not passed a complete cycle of semiconductor boom and have insufficient understanding of market risks. Therefore, for the current hot market situation, we should be vigilant, and we must not blindly optimistic and blindly expand.