From "China'S Silicon Valley" To Regional Cooperation: Why Does The Yangtze River Delta Attack The "Core Industry" Highland

Editor's note

Today, we come to the 10th issue of the second season "on high growth enterprises · 2021 gazelle enterprises in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay Area". In the first nine issues, we focused on Guangdong's strategic industrial clusters such as semiconductors and integrated circuits, advanced materials / cutting-edge new materials, and new energy in Dawan District, and analyzed the ecological way to cultivate "Gazelle" in Dawan district by Taking Dongguan and Shunde as samples.

Stones from other mountains can be used to attack jade. In the last issue, we focus on the semiconductor industry in the Yangtze River Delta, and explore how "China's Silicon Valley" was refined from the perspectives of history, capital, business, industry, University and research, and industrial ecology? It is hoped that it can be used for reference for the development of gazelle population in Dawan district.

In July, Shanghai Suiyuan Technology launched the second generation cloud AI training chip Shensi 2.0, which is the largest AI computing chip in China so far, and the first AI chip in China to support tf32 data accuracy. It was listed as one of the top ten treasures in the 2021 world artificial intelligence conference. It is worth noting that the previous version 1.0 has won the "China chip · annual major innovation breakthrough product award" in 2020.

Earlier, in January this year, days smart chip announced that its 7-nanometer GPGPU cloud computing chip Bi will be officially produced and put into commercial use in the second half of this year. After mass production, it will become the first 7Nm GPU chip independently developed and produced in China.

Coincidentally, the two companies that have made important breakthroughs in chip are both from Zhangjiang High Tech Park in Shanghai, and they have only been established for more than three years, and have obtained billions of financing, which can be called "Gazelle" enterprises.

In an interview with the 21st century economic reporter, Zhao Lidong, founder and CEO of Shanghai Suiyuan Technology Co., Ltd., said bluntly, "in terms of comprehensive development history, policies, talents and other aspects, Zhangjiang should be the first place in China to make chips. If Zhang Jiang fails to do well, I don't think any other place in the country can do well."

Zou Zhen, vice president of Tiantian smart chip product development, also told the 21st century economic report that it would be difficult for us to make such products without the accumulation of Zhangjiang in the past 20 years.

Zhangjiang is also known as "China's Silicon Valley", where most of Shanghai's IC related enterprises are gathered, forming an industrial chain including design, manufacturing and sealing and testing.

Today, integrated circuit is a strategic industry that is being cultivated by all over the world, and Shanghai has occupied the highland. By 2020, there are more than 700 integrated circuit enterprises in Shanghai, and the sales scale of integrated circuit industry will reach 207.133 billion yuan, accounting for 23.41% of the national total.

Behind Shanghai and Zhangjiang, how can the integrated circuit industry gather step by step and how can gazelle enterprises grow? What experience can we draw on for Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay area? All media reporters of Southern finance and economics recently made in-depth research.

"SMIC's establishment has great influence"

Speaking of the history of Shanghai's integrated circuits, we should go back to the national projects in the 1990s.

In December 1995, China launched the largest national project in the history of electronic industry - "909" project, with a total investment of 10 billion yuan, which was undertaken by Shanghai Huahong group. From then on, Shanghai began the journey of integrated circuit industry.

During the same period, in addition to Huahong group, there was also a heavyweight enterprise in Zhangjiang, Shanghai - "afatec" (modern era Micro Technology), providing a complete set of semiconductor chip packaging and testing services. The company is a joint venture between China, Thailand and the United States, with a total investment of 75 million US dollars. It belongs to the national integrated circuit packaging special project (908 project).

At the beginning of the new century, another action that has a great impact on Shanghai's IC industry is the establishment of SMIC. In 2000, Zhang Rujing led more than 300 Taiwan semiconductor practitioners and more than 100 "overseas returnees" to Zhangjiang, Shanghai, and founded SMIC international. Zheng Zhaohui, chairman of Shanghai Jifeng Electronics Co., Ltd., once recalled, "SMIC's scale is very large. When it started, the factory had tens of thousands of employees."

This group of talents has greatly promoted the development of Zhangjiang integrated circuit industry.

At that time, the main business in Zhangjiang was integrated circuit manufacturing, packaging and testing, and the industry chain quickly extended to the upstream - integrated circuit design. Another landmark event in this process was that in 2006, amd announced the formal operation of Shanghai R & D center, the largest R & D center outside the United States, as an important part of AMD's global R & D system strategic layout.

Zhao Lidong served amd from 2007 to 2014 and participated in the establishment of China R & D center. He told the 21st century economic report that at the beginning, labor-intensive work in high-tech, such as verification, was first put into China, "a large number of all kinds of verification were put over, from IP verification to the verification of the whole chip, and finally evolved into some verifications that are getting better and better, and the team began to understand what IP is about." Zhao Lidong recalled that IP design began half in the United States and half in China. Slowly, the relatively low-end IP design was put into China. After years of evolution, the whole chip project was finally put in China.

Business transfer is also accompanied by the team's talent building. From the beginning, some software engineers were in the United States and some were in China. Later, except for several management levels, the employees were localized.

"At the beginning of 2007, amd Shanghai R & D center had more than 100 people, and I had 2000 people when I stayed for 5 years." Zhao Lidong said that AMD has 2000 people in five years. Imagine the accumulation of nearly 20 years owned by Zhangjiang.

At present, six of the world's top 10 chip design companies have established regional headquarters and R & D centers in Zhangjiang Science City, including Qualcomm, Broadcom, NVIDIA, Chaowei (i.e., AMD), marvel and Spreadtrum. As of 2018, Shanghai has more than 160000 IC employees, and a number of gazelle enterprises are struggling to grow.

"This is a technology capital intensive industry." Zou told the 21st century economic report that we need to recruit experienced and mature workers to run a company. "In those years, many" big foreign enterprises "doing high-end chip design set their headquarters in Shanghai, and also in Zhangjiang software park. The R & D centers of these foreign enterprises trained a group of people for us, which are the basis for us to start our own businesses today."

50 billion fund to "one door" service

Since the 1990s, Shanghai and Zhangjiang have supported the IC industry. Around 1992, when Zhangjiang High Tech Park was just completed, it was initially established to be an integrated circuit industrial chain. A number of enterprises that settled down later also enjoyed preferential policies in terms of land and subsidies. These preferential policies helped Zhangjiang to complete the "original accumulation" of regional industries in the early stage -- large projects and large foreign capital landing in Zhangjiang, becoming the "leader" of gathering elements, and promoting the snowball to roll in Zhangjiang.

On the whole, the support policy has changed several times, but it has been basically consistent until today. For example, Suiyuan, as one of the first enterprises to settle in Lingang New Area of Shanghai pilot Free Trade Zone, Zhao Lidong told 21st century economic report that the government has provided subsidies from purchasing equipment to paying personal income tax for employees. Similarly, tiantianzhixin also enjoys the support of Shanghai's special policies for strategic emerging industries and Zhangjiang.

It is worth noting that, although subsidies are a help, subsidies are far from enough for many high investment innovative enterprises to survive.

Historically, in addition to subsidies, Shanghai and Zhangjiang have also provided important support to enterprises in terms of service and industrial fund investment.

After about 2005, the construction of high-tech zones around the country has sprung up, offering preferential treatment in terms of land and capital, and even using greater incentives to "dig corners" in Zhangjiang. How to retain enterprises? For a longer-term consideration, Zhang Jiang began to play the "service card". In 2008, Zhangjiang administrative service center opened and operated, and implemented "one door" service. Enterprises only need to go into one door and fill in a form, and the rest can be handed over to the backstage. The establishment of this administrative service center has reduced the number of examination and approval items from 61 to 39, and the time limit has been greatly shortened. This can be regarded as the early business environment reform.

At present, taking tiantianzhixin as an example, relevant personnel also assist in docking with bank financing channels, coordinating talent supporting policies, straightening out ODI filing, capital outbound related matters, etc., which can be described as "all-round". Such professional services can help gazelle enterprises, which are growing at a high speed, save a lot of "burden" on administrative procedures and focus more on their own business development“ The competition of parks has entered the 4.0 era, which is the competition of services. Some parks can even help enterprises to coordinate the business relationship between upstream and downstream. " Du Yuhu, Secretary General of Shanghai Development Zone Association, told reporters of the 21st century economic report.

In addition to providing services early, the 3 billion venture capital guidance fund launched in Shanghai in 2014 (mainly used to support the IC design industry) is also worth noting. At that time, after the golden decade of integrated circuits from 2000 to 2010, private capital had concerns about chip investment, especially some small enterprises that had not crossed the "Death Valley" and had not yet received the attention of the government. Facing the characteristics of large investment and long cycle in the chip industry, private capital also worried about the return. At this time, the government level to guide the entry of funds, to a certain extent, for the market to enter the "cardiotonic".

A year and a half later, in line with the national "big fund" plan, Shanghai launched another 50 billion yuan "small fund" for integrated circuits, which is divided into 10 billion yuan of equipment and materials fund, 10 billion yuan of design fund and 30 billion yuan of manufacturing fund. This has stimulated the development of integrated circuits until now and has also helped the growth of a number of gazelle enterprises“ The shareholders in the fund include Shanghai Guosheng, Unicom, China Mobile, tobacco, Guokai, etc Zhu Jiawei, senior investment consultant of Shenwan Hongyuan, told the 21st century economic report that semiconductor is a heavy asset industry with large investment in the early stage, which needs the leverage of the capital market.

Chen Zhen, a semiconductor industry personage, told the 21st century economic reporter that Shanghai's IC design industry has formed a "climate", and the relatively short board of domestic IC industry is no longer in the field of design, but in equipment manufacturing and other aspects. At present, Shanghai is also focusing on the investment and breakthrough in the equipment manufacturing of integrated circuit manufacturing such as etcher, which also involves a large number of key technologies.

The combination of production, teaching and research has been running through more than 20 years

From the experience of the world, the chip is updated in two or three years, and the integrated circuit industry also needs the investment of several generations.

"There is no doubt that the primary factor for Shanghai to develop the integrated circuit industry is talents. In addition to attracting a large number of talents in the integrated circuit industry at home and abroad, Shanghai has also cultivated a lot of successors in various colleges and universities. These two aspects have promoted the enrichment of industrial talents in Shanghai." Zhang Xiaorong, President of the Institute of deep science and technology, told reporters of the 21st century economic report.

In this process, it is worth noting that from the beginning, Shanghai integrated circuit has shown the obvious characteristics of the combination of production, teaching and research.

In addition to theory, at first, a lot of experience in the discipline also came from the industrial field, including the technology transfer of foreign "big factories" and so on. Many professors and teachers from various universities in Shanghai have also participated in the development of IC design companies.

Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics, the first listed company in China's IC design industry (listed on the Hong Kong GEM in 2000), was founded in Yifu Building of Fudan University in July 1998. At that time, Fudan University "State Key Laboratory of ASIC and systems", Shanghai commercial investment company and a group of entrepreneurs jointly founded Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics, hoping to build the best IC design company in China. At present, the company has gone through 23 years to develop products and cultivate a number of industrial talents for Shanghai.

At present, the combination of industry, University and research is more closely and actively.

In December last year, the joint R & D center of Shanghai Jiaotong University Suiyuan technology cloud AI acceleration system was officially unveiled. Zhao Lidong told reporters, "the vice president of the software school of Shanghai Jiaotong University is now working full-time in Suiyuan as our chief scientist in software. This is allowed by the University. Our cooperation is a little bit like learning from the Silicon Valley Stanford model."

It is Zhao Lidong's hope to create ecology together with universities and peer companies. Not only Shanghai Jiaotong University, but Suiyuan also has a lot of contacts with Tsinghua University“ As a start-up enterprise, it is impossible for us to do everything by ourselves. We, Tsinghua University and Jiaotong University are actually building an open source ecosystem. There are a lot of elements here, including compiler, operator library, function library, toolkit and so on. Let's give full play to their own strengths and slowly complete various elements together. " Zhao Lidong told reporters.

Industrial radiation, cooperation and common prosperity

Integrated circuits are not only in Shanghai, but also in the Yangtze River Delta region, which has become the largest scale and the highest output value of integrated circuits in China.

"Shanghai did not confine its technology to the development scope of the city, but expanded it rapidly, radiating the industry to the technologically developed areas around it, which also led to industrial cooperation and common prosperity in the Yangtze River Delta region, forming a model of regional economy." Zhang Xiaorong said.

In the first half of this year, the core thought Research Institute released a list of the competitiveness of urban integrated circuits in mainland China. Among the top 15, the Yangtze River Delta region has 6 SEATS (including Shanghai, Wuxi, Hefei, Nanjing, Suzhou and Hangzhou), 2 seats in Dawan District, 2 seats in Chengdu Chongqing region, 2 seats in central region, 1 seat in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province, and 1 seat in Northeast China. In addition, Shanghai and Wuxi ranked among the top three.

Wuxi's development is similar to that of Shanghai. Its industrial base also comes from the layout of national projects in the last century, and it was once the national microelectronic industry base in the south of China. In the new century, Wuxi seized the opportunity of overseas semiconductor capacity transfer, settled down in SK Hynix Semiconductor and other "large factories", and cultivated Wuxi China Resources micro, Jiangsu Changdian and other local leading enterprises.

Over the past years, Shanghai and Wuxi were the only two cities in the Yangtze River Delta with large-scale wafer factories. In the past three or five years, Nanjing and Hefei have seized a new round of development opportunities and settled in new large-scale wafer factories Chen told reporters, such as the TSMC 12 inch wafer plant in Nanjing, and the Hefei Municipal Government cooperated with Li Jing to establish the wafer integration, and also built a 12 inch wafer factory.

In addition, Ningbo, Shaoxing and other cities also have the production line of core Luozi, but the relative scale is not large. "A 12 inch wafer plant needs at least 10 billion yuan of investment, which is a heavy asset. It tests the strength of local cities' promotion, and is often related to leadership style," Chen said

If you look further down, Fengjie also belongs to heavy assets. Jiangsu is the leader in this field, especially Suzhou. As early as December 2004, the international "giant" amd Suzhou packaging and testing plant was put into operation, and then the sealing and testing business in Suzhou has been expanded and expanded several times. Looking at the upstream, Hangzhou has made good achievements in IC design. In 2020, the sales scale of Hangzhou's IC design industry will reach 24.2 billion yuan, ranking the fourth in China, next only to Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing.

"Due to greater preferential policies, there are also a very small number of integrated circuit design gazelle enterprises' registered address changed from Zhangjiang, Shanghai to Hangzhou." However, they still have R & D departments in Zhangjiang, Chen told reporters. At present, Zhangjiang is still playing a leading role in chip design, equipment materials, processing technology and other aspects.

In the past three years, Shanghai, Wuxi, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing and Hefei have issued and upgraded relevant policies to promote the development of integrated circuit industry, setting off a new round of industrial boom in the Yangtze River Delta. Under the background of Yangtze River Delta integration, cooperation between them is more frequent.

In the first half of this year, the Yangtze River Delta integrated circuit industry chain alliance was unveiled. In this regard, the economic and information departments of one city and three provinces also signed the cooperation agreement on joint development of industrial chain supplement and fixed chain strong chain action. For gazelle enterprises, although they have initially crossed the "Death Valley", they are still in the growth stage, and they can get better heating by holding groups. In particular, the government level to cultivate and improve the industrial chain can also help gazelle enterprises grow in a better industrial ecology.

When the alliance was unveiled, Wu Jincheng, director of Shanghai Economic and Information Commission, said that the establishment of the alliance indicates that we have established a new cross regional organizational model to promote the supplement, strengthening and fixation of the industrial chain. This will give full play to the advantages of rich talents, developed manufacturing industry, active scientific research institutions and huge market potential in the Yangtze River Delta, and build a world-class industrial cluster with international competitiveness.