Recently, the news about the US government's alert to the "rise" of China's semiconductors has been heated up. Does China's increase in large-scale investment in the semiconductor industry really distort the global IC market, leading to severe oversupply and hindering innovation and development? In this regard, Zhou Zixue, Chairman and Executive Director of SMIC, expressed his views at the 29th SEMICON China. He believes that the US statement is one-sided. We are still very weak. A country that is not among the top 20 semiconductor companies in the world, how dare to claim that it is competitive in the semiconductor industry?
Recently, the twenty-ninth SEMICON China 2017 held in Shanghai. Zhou Zixue, Chairman of SMIC, delivered a keynote speech, discussing the current situation and future of China's integrated circuit industry from the perspective of the development prospects of the integrated circuit industry, whether China conforms to market laws, the development status and prospects.
How does Moore's Law go on?
The development of the integrated circuit industry is a long process of evolution. In 1958, Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit at Texas Instruments, and Intel founder Gordon Moore proposed Moore's Law in 1965. Now 60 years have passed. With the advancement of the integrated circuit technology, the argument that the end of Moore's Law has been repeated.

What is Moore's law? When the price is constant, the number of components can be accommodated on the integrated circuit, about every 18-24 months will double, the performance will be doubled. In fact, Moore's law itself is not a "law", it is a trend phenomenon in the development of the industry. Zhou Zixue said that the continuous improvement of technology brought about by the function and cost reduction, the same phenomenon in other industries, but the most prominent of the integrated circuit industry. We cannot look at it from an engineering point of view, because it cannot be understood in a rigid way.
So, in the end Moore's law will continue to go along with the line width 14nm, 10nm, or refers to the physical dimensions of the channel it? In fact, Zhou Zixue pointed out that Moore's law can be understood as a powerful function, cost reduction. If you follow this trend every year, nano will become a label, rather than the key parameters of Moore's law.
China's development of integrated circuits are in line with the law?
All along, Zhou Zixue is not only a semiconductor man, but also a long time in the macroeconomic sector workers. Out of the semiconductor industry to observe the trend of development in the field of electronic information today, Zhou Zixue believes that the Internet of things, the proliferation of information and mobile use has become the three major trends. The information industry is not only to provide a new industry for mankind, but also to connect everything, increasing the amount of information, and now we can do a lot of things with a mobile phone, mobile payment is more difficult to let China go ahead.
Even so, there are three important requirements for the integrated circuit industry, performance, cost and power consumption. The first two are old problems, is the emergence of mobile terminals, the power consumption of the increasingly high demand, whether academic research, manufacturing or sales, any business model needs to solve industrial problems from these three aspects, find the balance between the three points. Who do well, who will continue to move forward, otherwise it will be eliminated.
Throughout the history of the development of the semiconductor industry, from 1958 to today, has been in a state of change, the distribution of more and more open. Even if the United States the most powerful historical period, the entire industry is not a country can do all the industry, the semiconductor is always an open international industry.
Development of the integrated circuit industry, although the country's major decisions, but in Zhou Zixue seems to be the right choice. Because China has a huge market, from an economic point of view, there is a place where the market needs to exist. If a large market did not correspond to the industrial layout of that country is problematic, the market supply shortage, Chinese development of the integrated circuit industry is inevitable, which is in line with the economic law and the law of industrial evolution.
Current situation and future of IC industry in China
International Agency IHS data show that in 2016 the global IC market sales reached $353 billion, accounting for 45% of china. With such a huge market space, the company's top 20 companies in the global semiconductor revenue but can not find the name of Chinese manufacturers. Zhou Zixue pointed out that our industry is still weak, with many problems.
First of all, China did not enter the 20 enterprises worldwide, both in the field of CPU, logic circuit, memory, equipment and materials, there is not enough competitive ahead, so we can not say that Chinese competitive.
Second, excessive publicity caused the advanced countries and regions of China's unnecessary vigilance. From the media over the development of China's semiconductor industry, misleading the industry at home and abroad on the Chinese IC industry, with the advanced countries to cause unnecessary vigilance. China is still in early development, but there are some good business trend of development, we also need to work hard, solid work, excessive Xuan will only cause other adverse problems, this disadvantage has brought us many obstacles.
Third, the development of China's IC industry is not concentrated, the resource is dispersed. Manufacturing is a highly internationalized, large-scale industry, the need for continuous large-scale investment. Construction of a 14nm production line invested more than 5 billion U.S. dollars, more than $1 billion investment in R & D process, the design industry is not in line with the form of the development of manufacturing industry.