As a semiconductor practitioner, a simple analysis and summary

As a semiconductor practitioner, a simple analysis and summary: short-term waste heat, medium - and long-term development without the future of the country, bar...

Nov 02,2023 | Moon

As a semiconductor practitioner, a simple analysis and summary: short-term waste heat, medium - and long-term development without the future of the country, barcode scanning solutions is a passing choice, but we are definitely not for a good choice.

Here are a few: Those who don't read for too long can read and then leave:

1. China's semiconductor industry, whether it is design, manufacturing or packaging, basically stays in the middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain, precision automation systems vulnerable to patent barriers and trade barriers, and difficult to expand profits. In other words, it is difficult for China's semiconductor industry to grow.

2. For the high-level semiconductor industry, prosperity is not really a problem. ZF was concerned with national security, not technological advantage, and local and major semiconductor companies understood ZF's intentions. They expanded their factories aggressively, and all sorts of design start-ups sprang up. semiconductor manufacturing solutions There are all kinds of thunderstorms and hoaxes, and there are quite a few flowers to transmit the scent.

3. For semiconductor workers in China, except for those who entered the industry seven or eight years ago and achieved some success, most of them are not earning enough from the industry to realize their personal value. On the one hand, whether it is design, manufacturing or packaging, practitioners are very serious about screws, and personal success depends heavily on the team and the company; On the other hand, combined with the former, it is difficult to keep up and competition is fierce, which leads enterprises to enter the spiritual labor intensive mode of 996, wages are reduced, workload is increased, serious forced overtime, midlife crisis is deepened, making it difficult for practitioners who join later to balance life, benefits are greatly reduced, and the possibility of bankruptcy or not renewal of middle-aged enterprises is greatly increased.

4. Some immature and irresponsible personal opinions

The following is the detailed data analysis, I focus on the analysis of the second and third, the first is that the answer can be found from the analysis of the two and three questions.

China's semiconductor industry, whether it is design, manufacturing or packaging, basically stays in the middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain, vulnerable to patent barriers and trade barriers, and difficult to expand profits. In other words, it is difficult for China's semiconductor industry to grow.

Personally, I am familiar with production and know a little about design. On the whole, China's semiconductor industry has long been in the middle and downstream, that is, the part of manufacturing integration, packaging, terminal and product sales, and the upstream industry of the manufacturing plate. China has little or no presence in core markets, such as critical semiconductor equipment and component supplies. There are almost no domestic companies that do not have a complete system, and most of the few equipment companies are still similar to the model of resale (buy others - modify - sell). China only has relatively systematic equipment output in a few processes such as etching, but it is still based on foreign patent barriers. Most equipment practitioners are only engaged in equipment installation, simulation, pre-sales and after-sales maintenance and so on. The same is true for the design sector. The design is highly dependent on software tools, and the design itself is highly dependent on flow charts, which greatly enhances the importance of the manufacturing process, especially the equipment side.

I emphasize the above points because I want to say: China's semiconductor industry seems to be blooming, but it is extremely fragile. On the one hand, once the equipment and software in the upstream of the semiconductor industry are clamped, China's semiconductor industry will have no power to fight back, and the same is true of Hisilicon and Huahong SMIC. Even the recently popular third-generation semiconductors are inseparable from these. This is also an important reason for the United States to strictly control the share of equipment patents and authorized use in the trade war. On the other hand, losing the share of the upstream market means giving a lot of profits to upstream companies with equipment output and patent barriers, which will make China's semiconductor industry lack of sufficient funds for corresponding research and development, lack of upstream impact power, China's semiconductor industry is difficult to grow or obtain huge profits.

More importantly, the main reason for China's historical and cultural development determines that Chinese enterprises stay in the comprador thinking and social labor population dividend stage for a long time, whether it is ZF itself, or senior management managers in practitioners, should not pay attention to the upstream field of information technology knowledge-intensive, which makes China's desire to impact the upstream industrial structure is not strong at all. Laypeople and Chinese grassroots engineers think that the semiconductor material industry is very important, but in fact, the senior executives of semiconductor companies and the internal personnel of relevant government departments do not care at all.

equipment side personal opinions