Compared with Intel and AMD, China's local CPU manufacturers and their products have always had a weak sense of existence. However, in recent two years, with the changes of national policies and international trade situation, domestic CPU has ushered in a new development opportunity. More and more enterprises and institutions are paying more attention to local CPU enterprises and their products, especially institutions and state-owned enterprises, and their desire for domestic CPU is increasing, which also provides a broader development space for local CPU manufacturers. Who's in charge of multi-line? Recently, Loongson Zhongke, a domestic CPU manufacturer, has made further progress in industrialization expansion. At the end of April, Godson 2K1000LA, a low-power general-purpose processor used in industrial control and terminal fields, completed the function and performance test of the revised chip, and successfully streamed the chip. At present, it is being tested by users. Godson 2K1000LA kernel is updated to LA264 based on LoongArch, and the performance and power consumption are optimized by adjusting the design. The launch of Loongson 2K1000LA processor indicates that after LoongArch is turned to LoongArch in the second half of 2021, Loongson industrial control business is also turned to Loong Arch. Different from x86 and Arm, LoongArch architecture of Loong Loong is a self-developed instruction set IP. Although it was developed based on MIPS in the early stage, after years of iteration and research and development, LoongArch has become an independent and controllable architecture. Similar to Loongson, Shenwei is also the representative of domestic CPU, whose instruction set architecture is SW64 defined by itself, and the representative processor is Shenwei SW26010. Different from the business models of Loongson and Shenwei, several other representative local manufacturers Feiteng, Megacore, Haiguang and Huawei developed their own CPUs by purchasing IP licenses. Feiteng and Huawei are mainly based on Arm architecture, and Huawei is also developing CPU based on x86 architecture. However, due to the interference of non-market factors and the restriction of international trade in recent two years, Huawei's x86 architecture CPU business is difficult to continue. The company will devote more energy to the development of Arm architecture CPU, and the representative product is Huawei Kunpeng 920. In addition, Ali also introduced the Arm architecture processor Eternal 710. Megacore and Haiguang develop CPU based on x86 architecture. Relatively speaking, Haiguang is relatively low-key, and Megacore's product iteration news is more. Megacore's x86 technology comes from VIA (VIA), whose representative products are KH-3000 and KX-6000 series. At the beginning of this year, the company announced that in 2022, it will launch server processors and desktop processors based on a new independent architecture design. It can be seen that Chinese local CPU manufacturers have different development paths, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. In the process of development, there will be various challenges, and different types of companies will face different difficulties. EDA and IP dilemma currently For chip designers, EDA tools are essential. However, the current EDA market is dominated by the international giants, and the technical strength and market share of Chinese local EDA manufacturers are small. At present, Synopsys, Cadence and Mentor, the three EDA giants, occupy almost 70% of the global market share, and nearly 90% of China's market is controlled by them. Sky Survey shows that there are about 30 local EDA manufacturers in China, and the establishment time is mainly after 2010. From the perspective of registered capital of enterprises, the proportion of enterprises with registered capital less than 10 million yuan is 55.17%, that of enterprises with 10-50 million yuan is 20.69%, and that of enterprises with more than 50 million yuan is 24.14%. In terms of personnel size, among the enterprises that have published relevant information, 18 enterprises have less than 50 employees. Such an enterprise's capital and personnel scale is difficult to compete with big international companies. At present, when international trade is restricted, the shortage of domestic EDA tools is a potential risk. Perhaps it is precisely because of this. In the last two or three years, a number of local EDA software companies have been newly established, which to some extent seems to be able to meet part of the demand of chip design companies for EDA tools after international trade is restricted. However, in the long run, it is difficult to form a market size and high influence situation, and it is still impossible to fundamentally solve the problem. We still need to make continuous efforts to become bigger and stronger. In terms of IP, local CPU manufacturers mainly engaged in self-research may usher in better development opportunities, while those authorized by Arm and x86 will face greater risks, especially in the present and foreseeable future when international trade is constantly restricted. It is also necessary to continuously speed up the digestion and absorption of core technologies of instruction sets and continuously improve the self-research component. Chip manufacturing has a long way to go. In the whole semiconductor industry chain, chip manufacturing is the most important link. All semiconductor equipment and materials, as well as EDA and IP of considerable scale, are all serving chip manufacturing. No matter how good the chip design level is, it is necessary to get physical products through the manufacturing process before it can be really applied to production. Relatively speaking, the chip design level in Chinese mainland is not far behind the international advanced design level, but it is far behind the international advanced level in the field of chip manufacturing and semiconductor equipment and materials closely related to it. This is the main reason why the National Semiconductor "Big Fund" launched in 2014 focused on supporting local semiconductor manufacturing and equipment and material project construction in batches. At present, Chinese mainland has formed fabs with certain scale and industry influence, mainly including SMIC, Hua Hong Semiconductor and China Resources Micro. However, in terms of advanced manufacturing processes, 14nm is the only one that can achieve a certain scale of mass production. The 14nm process technology is not enough for mainstream CPU in the market, especially for mobile phones and data center processors. To produce chips with 7nm, 5nm and more advanced processes, the order must be handed over to wafer foundries outside the mainland. However, at the present time when international trade is constantly restricted, such a contract production situation is risky. Not only the fabs, but also the semiconductor equipment and materials necessary for chip factories in mainland China are subject to import restrictions, which aggravates the risks. Judging from the new products announced by local CPU manufacturers in the last year, both the independent research and development of instruction sets and the purchase of Arm and x86 licenses have started to advance towards the advanced technology after 10nm. For example, when Shenwei just released SW26010 processor, it adopted TSMC's 28nm process. Although the latest processor has not been officially announced, according to the author's knowledge, it will be manufactured by 14nm process. At present, among the local manufacturers in Chinese mainland, only SMIC has the mass production capacity of 14nm process, but it mainly produces mobile phone chips. It will be more difficult to produce more complex CPUs, and the mass production capacity remains to be seen. In addition, Megacore's KH-3000 and KX-6000 series were released in 2019 and manufactured by 16nm process. According to the CPU development roadmap published by the company, KX-6000 is followed by KX-7000 series, which will be upgraded to 7nm process and adopt a new CPU microarchitecture. According to Wang Weilin, the chief engineer of Megacore, the performance goal of KX-7000 is to reach the level of AMD in the same period. This year, AMD will launch Zen4 processor with TSMC's 5nm process. Based on this calculation, it is very likely that Megacore's latest processor process will enter the level below 10nm, and it will undoubtedly be manufactured by TSMC or Samsung. Compared with international manufacturers, there is still an obvious gap in the iterative progress of Chinese local chip manufacturers. Coupled with the constraints of semiconductor equipment and materials, there are hidden dangers for the development of local CPU. Ecological construction is imperative. CPU itself is a complex system, and it is very difficult to produce it. It needs the support of IP and semiconductor equipment and materials, which is a very important part of the whole CPU ecosystem. However, only CPU hardware products are just the beginning. If it is to be popularized and accepted by customers, its ecological construction, especially related software ecological construction, is very important. In 1982, the PC produced by NEC in Japan used Intel chips, and in 1985 it was replaced by a self-developed chip, but in 1986 it was switched back to Intel chips. The key reason is that the United States imposed sanctions on Japan, which made the latter lose its ecological dominance. At present, the global CPU industry chain is dominated by two ecosystems: one is the x86 ecosystem based on Windows+Intel; The second is the AA ecology based on Arm+Android. Arm is not only on the mobile phone, but also in the PC and server fields in recent years. The international trade situation in the past two years has made it necessary for China to speed up the construction of CPU independent ecosystem, and strive to have independent instruction system and domestic operating system in the near future, thus forming a complete ecosystem. In the aspect of independent ecosystem construction, besides the existing independent instruction set, RISC-V is also a good choice. It is like China's energy strategy. If we want to ensure the future energy security, we must vigorously develop new energy industries now. In the field of CPU, the development of RISC-V has a similar effect. At present, many manufacturers at home and abroad are making efforts to develop RISC-V, and the pursuit of RISC-V in China is even hotter. All circles in Industry-University-Research are very optimistic about its development, and start-up companies or entrepreneurial projects based on RISC-V emerge in endlessly, among which the Chinese Academy of Sciences is the most representative. In June, 2021, at the first RISC-V China Summit, Chinese Academy of Sciences announced "Xiangshan", a domestic open-source high-performance RISC-V processor. In this regard, Bao Yungang, a professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that to build an open source RISC-V core mainline like Linux, it can be widely used by the industry, and it can also support the academic community to experiment with innovative ideas. It is reported that in order to better support the development and debugging of Chisel, the team has developed more than ten tools to support an agile development process of processor chips. In addition to scientific research institutes, there are also enterprises involved in the development of Xiangshan processor. At present, ByteDance and other companies have joined its second-phase joint development partner team. The pressure of public opinion is on thin ice. In recent years, due to the impact of sanctions and international trade restrictions, as an important part of domestic semiconductor manufacturers in China, CPU companies are treading on thin ice in publicity and public relations, and are very cautious for fear of adverse effects. I remember that two years ago, a local CPU manufacturer in China was reported. The company published a product information through its official WeChat WeChat official account, which was of course very positive. I wrote an article based on this report. However, soon after the article was published, I received an email from the marketing department of the company, hoping to remove it. The incident is still tortuous, which left a deep impression on the author. In fact, similar things happened from time to time before 2018. After 2019, the shadow of sanctions hung over China's semiconductor industry, especially for the more sensitive CPU board. This fully reflects the weak foundation of the local semiconductor industry, which can't withstand the wind and rain of international trade. At the same time, it also reflects that manufacturers lack "foresight" for industrial development, and when the storm comes, they will feel overwhelmed. In the future, the international trade situation will probably continue according to the present situation, and Chinese local CPU manufacturers must also strengthen their adaptability. Perhaps, when they are no longer as sensitive to public opinion as they are today, it will be the day when domestic CPUs really take off.
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