The integrated circuit industry is one of the fastest growing and most influential industries in the world. The integrated circuit industry itself has experienced continuous development and evolution for decades, from the initial industrial structure with “all-round†enterprises as the mainstay. It is transformed into an industrial structure with an increasingly clear industrial division and a vertical division of labor. This is also the evolution from a comprehensive development model to a professional development model. This change in industrial structure is to adapt to the fierce competition and the inherent requirements of achieving maximum value.
Design, manufacture and package test sets
When the integrated circuit was just born, as an emerging technology, the technology involved in production was only mastered by a small number of enterprises, and the equipment, materials, manufacturing process technology used in production were highly specialized, and it was the production of other products in the past. Have not been involved or used. Therefore, no matter from product design technology, equipment production technology or raw material production technology to processing technology, it can not be directly obtained as a mature product from the market. In this case, the only way for enterprises to intervene in the field of integrated circuits is We have a complete set of technologies including product design and manufacturing, and we have semiconductor material preparation and production equipment, which is what we usually call "all-round enterprise."
The United States' integrated electronics companies began investing in integrated circuit industries such as Texas Instruments, Fairchild, Motorola, IBM, and DECD. These American companies participate in the integrated circuit industry mainly to serve their own electronic whole products (electronic equipment, communication equipment, household appliances, etc.), thereby increasing the added value of their whole products and improving the quality and function of the products. Reduce production costs and compete for the market. At that time, the circuit products were mainly bipolar device circuits and simple function MOS circuits, which were used to replace the costly transistor devices. In fact, early integrated circuit companies, including the United States and Japan, are attached to large enterprise groups. They are engaged in the design and production of products under the unified guidance of the Group's strategic thinking, and the organizational structure within the industry is mainly characterized by horizontal integration. That is, the integrated IDM integrates the design, manufacturing, packaging and testing of the whole machine product and integrated circuit.
Separation of materials and equipment
With the improvement of industrial technology and the expansion of market scale, the advantages of specialized division of labor are increasingly reflected. Therefore, the equipment industry and material industry with clear product forms are first separated from these “all-round enterprises†and developed as independent industries. . In this way, the entire industrial system has been divided into three fine-molecular industries: the integrated circuit industry, the equipment industry and the materials industry.
In this context, Applied Materials was founded in the United States in 1967 and is now the world's largest semiconductor equipment manufacturer. The material and equipment manufacturing industry has been separated from the integrated circuit industry earlier, and the development technology is difficult. It belongs to the basic science category and has high development costs. Therefore, the entry threshold is high. So far, semiconductor equipment manufacturing has been monopolized by Applied Materials, Tokyo Electronics of Japan, ASML of the Netherlands, and other companies in the United States, Japan, and the European Union. The same thing happens in the materials industry, and the United States, Japan, and the European Union have control.
Separation of packaging and testing
In the 1970s, a major adjustment occurred in the structure of the integrated circuit industry, that is, the packaging and testing industry gradually separated from the entire industry as an independent industry development. At this stage, the downstream packaging and testing technology has basically been materialized into equipment and equipment technology and raw material technology. That is to say, the higher technology part of the integrated circuit of the rear package has been concentrated in the equipment instrument technology and raw material technology. The post-packaging and testing production processes have actually been transformed into labor-intensive jobs, while the labor costs in developing countries are low, and it is difficult to achieve cost advantages in developing labor-intensive industries. Therefore, during this period, developed countries began to transfer packaging to other regions outside the homeland, and a separate packaging and testing industry began to emerge.
In the late 1970s, most of the IC manufacturing companies in the United States began to shift the packaging and testing processes with the lowest technical content in the vertical production chain to overseas, mainly in Malaysia, the Philippines, and South Korea. Taiwan, China. It is happen that governments or authorities in these regions are also developing integrated circuits as a pillar industry in the region. At present, Taiwanese companies account for the largest proportion of the global packaging and testing industry. The world's top five packaging and testing manufacturers have occupied three seats, not only in revenue, but also in profitability. Most of the advanced packaging and testing companies are concentrated in Taiwan. .
Separation of the design industry
In the 1970s, integrated circuit design was done by directly drawing layouts. At that time, only a few hundred gates of complexity were designed. The design technology was mainly associated with specific technicians; in the 1980s, Daisy first realized Computer-aided engineering (CAE) enables engineers to complete the design by drawing logic diagrams and automatic placement and routing. CAE not only makes the design level rise rapidly from the original hundreds of doors to about 10,000 doors, but also automatic layout. The technical requirements for the designer are reduced, and the integrated circuit design technology is initially partially materialized into the design tool. With the development of EDA tools (electronic design automation tools), PCB design methods are introduced into IC design, such as library concepts, process simulation parameters and simulation concepts, etc., the design begins to enter the abstraction stage, so that the design process can be independent of production. The existence of technology has laid the foundation for the expanded application of integrated circuits.
With the widespread use and popularity of microprocessors and PCs (especially in communications, industrial control, consumer electronics, etc.), the IC industry has begun to enter a customer-oriented phase, and product differentiation has increased, which makes The integrated circuit industry has entered the era of a customized product from the competition era of a standard product (such as DRAM, standard logic circuit, etc.), so a large number of specialized IC design companies have emerged. As a result, new changes have taken place in the organization of the integrated circuit industry, and vertical division of labor and industrial agglomeration have clearly emerged in the integrated circuit industry.
Since the founding of LSILogic, the world's first professional integrated circuit design company in 1982, IC design companies have achieved extraordinary growth with flexible business models, innovative design and tight integration with the application market. In 2006, the world IC design company's revenue increased by 34% compared with 2005, much higher than the overall semiconductor industry's 8.9% growth rate, accounting for 20% of the semiconductor industry's overall revenue.
During this period, due to the improvement of the manufacturing process level, the capital requirements for the production line are increasing. Most IDM SMEs have been unable to bear the operational risks brought by these expenses. The high construction cost also limits many attempts to enter. The IC industry's people, then only foundry companies that focus on chip manufacturing (Foundry) appeared. In 1987, TSMC, the world's first integrated circuit manufacturing professional foundry service company, was established. Today, TSMC, the founder of the industry's professional foundry model, has become the world's largest professional integrated circuit manufacturing company, providing the industry's most advanced process technology and the most complete component database and intellectual property in the field of professional wafer fabrication services. , design tools and design processes. In the semiconductor foundry camp, TSMC, UMC, SMIC, and Chartered belong to the top four companies, occupying most of the foundry market, represented by X-Fab and Jazz Semiconductor. The company has its own place to provide special Foundry services (such as RF, Analog).
The emergence of a large number of unproductive IC design companies has provided a huge space for the development of professional foundries; on the contrary, the emergence of foundries has also lowered the threshold for design companies to enter the IC field, and a large number of design companies have also been born. The unmatched IC design company (Fabless) and IC foundry manufacturing company (Foundry) have become an important model for the development of the integrated circuit industry. As can be seen from the figure below, Fabless has increased its number of companies by 4 times and operating income by 40 times in 11 years, with an average annual growth rate of 22%, which is much higher than the industry's 8% speed and IDM 7%.
The transformation of integrated IDM to professional semiconductor companies
Professional IDM company, which specializes in the design, manufacture, packaging and testing of the semiconductor industry, is basically not engaged in the whole machine business. This form began in the United States in the late 1960s, such as Intel, AMD, Zilog and other companies. In 1987, the semiconductor division of the integrated electronics company France Thomson was separated from the Italian semiconductor company into STM Semiconductor. The professional IDM company has a typical demonstration significance compared to the efficient operation of the integrated IDM company.
In the late 1990s, with the popularity of the Internet, the IC industry entered an advanced stage of competition-oriented. The international competition changed from the original resource competition and price competition to the talent knowledge competition and intensive capital competition. The phenomenon is very eye-catching.
In the years before and after 2000, Motorola, Siemens, Philip and other European and American integrated IDM companies were forced to separate the semiconductor business from the competitive pressure, and established professional IDM companies such as Freescale, Infineon and NXP. Japan's integrated electronics companies NEC and Hitachi (also a comprehensive IDM company) divested their memory division to establish a memory giant Elpida, and later Mitsubishi joined, and Hitachi and Mitsubishi's non-memory business divisions separated and jointly established Renesas Semiconductor. The industry is quite eye-catching. The most typical IDM manufacturer has transformed into a professional IDM manufacturer. Motorola has a total of 39 semiconductor factories in 2003. After closure, mergers and reorganizations, only the top 8 most profitable factories were deposited. The MOS 17 plant, which was built in Tianjin for $1.8 billion, was sold to SMIC in the form of equity transfer after three years of trial operation. After its structural restructuring in 2004, the new company Freescale quickly went public within a year and achieved a turnaround.
As can be seen from the above situation, professional IDM companies have adopted a more "focused" strategy on product types. In fact, as early as 1985, the United States represented Intel, in order to resist Japan’s threat to become the world’s semiconductor leader, voluntarily gave up the DRAM market, engaged in CPU and logic circuits, made major structural adjustments, and regained the world’s semiconductor hegemony. status. Later, the same situation happened to AMD. In order to be more competitive, AMD divested its memory business in 2003 and concentrated on the CPU business. Its memory business and Fujitsu jointly established Spansion Flash Memory, and Spansion independently developed the memory business. .
In the process of industrial development, people realize that the integrated circuit company system that spans the long industrial chain is not necessarily conducive to the development of the enterprise. The "segmentation" can be refined, and the "union" becomes an advantage. Many integrated IDM companies, especially American European companies have been converted into professional IDM companies.
In summary, in the 50 years since the birth of the integrated circuit industry, with the constant changes in technology and market, after many structural adjustments, it has gradually evolved from the original “big and complete†form of industry to the current “specialized And fine" of a number of fine molecular industries. On the basis of IDM's continued role, the IC industry structure has been transformed into a trend of high degree of specialization, forming a situation in which the design industry, manufacturing industry, packaging industry and testing industry are independent. Even within the design industry itself, there have been subdivisions, such as design service companies specializing in IP and third-party design companies; manufacturing is divided into two types: IDM manufacturing and professional foundry manufacturing. It is these interactions between the fine-molecular industries with different characteristics, mutual promotion and mutual restraint, which have increasingly affected the development of the entire integrated circuit industry system. In recent years, the development of the global IC industry has increasingly shown the vitality of industry chain segmentation and model diversification.
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