Over the past year or so, the attention of the domestic technology industry to local chips has soared because of the Huawei ban in the United States. Especially in some key areas related to national security, whether reliable domestic chips can be found for use has become a top priority for practitioners. In fact, this is what the Songshan Lake China IC Innovation Summit Forum has been focusing on over the past decade.

This is a summit hosted by the Integrated Circuit Design Branch of China Semiconductor Industry Association and Xinyuan Microelectronics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., the goal of the summit is to find the best IC design companies in China. According to Dai Weimin, chairman and president of Xinyuan, a total of 46 companies participated in the promotion of the summit between 2011 and 2019, of which 10 have gone public, accounting for 22%.

In addition, three are in the process of listing, six have been invested by large funds and four have been acquired. "according to incomplete statistics, 20 of these enterprises have received financing," Dai Weimin stressed.

This year, the summit brought the introduction of 10 chips from 10 local core companies, providing important domestic chip "power" for the recent hot "new infrastructure".

The rise of domestic FPGA

In the construction of new infrastructure, FPGA is one of the areas that can not be ignored. From past reports, we can see that this is a market dominated by a number of American manufacturers such as Xilinx, Intel (Altera) and Lattice. In the current international competitive environment, whether to have local FPGA supply has become a hot issue.

"after 2012, with the establishment of fully domestic forward design FPGA companies such as Zhi Polycrystal, Anlu, Ziguang Tongchuang and Gao Yun, domestic FPGA has been recognized and used by the industry, and domestic FPGA will usher in a golden era of development," said Jia Hong, chairman and general manager of Zhi Polycrystal.

From his introduction, we know that domestic FPGA has been applied in many fields, such as chip development, communication, data center, industry, video and image processing, audio processing, medical, automotive electronics and consumer electronics.

At this promotion meeting, Jia Hong brought her latest FPGA product of 28nm process-- Seal5000 series.

According to reports, this series of FPGA has 39K look-up table logic units, 42 groups (18 × 18) DSP units and 1134KB BRAM, as well as built-in ARM M3 hard core, DDR2/3 controller hard core, 2-way 12 bits ADC and phase-locked loop (PLL) to provide frequency doubling, frequency division, phase transfer, spread spectrum and other system clock functions.

As a FPGA,Seal5000 chip software with forward design, the design process is similar to ISE/Quartus II/Diamond, including synthesis, constraint, layout and routing, download programming and so on. Intelligent polycrystal chip uses the self-developed FPGA development software "HqFpga" to complete synthesis, layout and routing, timing analysis, configuration programming and on-chip logic analysis.

From Jia Hong's introduction, we know that Zhi polycrystal Hailin HqFPGA software is the earliest FPGA software developed independently from synthesis to layout and routing in China, which can support comprehensive FPGA logic and physical optimization technology. For domestic users, it also has multi-language support, including Chinese, and can also achieve a better user experience through one-click flow and RTL-level debugging functions.

"like Xilinx Vivado and Intel Quartus Prime, HqFpga is a general-purpose, fully integrated and ALL-IN-ONE advanced FPGA software architecture, but has a better user experience than Xilinx ISE and Altera QuartusII," Jia said.

With the support of these hardware and software, intelligent polycrystal Seal5000 can replace many kinds of FPGA chips of Xilinx and Intel, and provide various support for domestic applications. Thanks to the company's investment in hardware and testing, software and IP and solutions, Chi Polycrystal has also planned a wide range of products, including its 14nm Shark shark series.

"2012 to 2016 is the first stage of the company, in which we develop cost-effective products based on the proven innovative framework of mature process verification, occupy the market and solve the company's survival problems; 2017 to 2021 is the second stage of the company. During this period, we develop new products with mainstream and advanced processes according to market demand to solve the development problems of our company. 2021 to 2025 is the third stage of the company, during which we will pursue international technological trends and use the world's leading technology to develop products with core competitiveness to become globally competitive companies, "Jia Hong said.

Domestic "Core" Power in AI Market

AI is also an important part in the planning of new infrastructure. As a field with extremely high requirements for computing power and excellent test of algorithms, if we can not control the software and hardware of AI, the future data security will be lack of guarantee. Yuntian Lifei, as an upstart in the domestic AI field, has also walked out of their characteristics on this road.

Liao Xiongcheng, director of Yuntian Lifei chip products, told reporters at the summit that Shenzhen Yuntian Lifei Technology Co., Ltd. was established in August 2014, as China's leading digital city solution provider with AI algorithm chip capability, the company is committed to structuring the physical world through AI technology and creating a digital twin city.

He further pointed out that with the help of the company's AI algorithm platform, AI chip platform and big data platform, Yuntian Lifei promoted the "Nebula" open AI ecology, being able to share technology, build ecology with people in AI ecology, jointly accelerate AI penetration into the industry, focus on three major production directions, and empower developers.

From his introduction, we know that in the ecology of Yuntian Lifei, developers can complete a hardware design within a week, and the adaptation algorithm only takes a week, and it takes another week to interface with the service, which means that developers can have complete AI product service capabilities in only one month when they cooperate with Yuntian Lifei.

Among them, the self-developed DeepEye1000 chip is our most important support, "says Liao Xiongcheng. According to reports, this is a chip made by 22nm technology, with independent intellectual property instruction set, multi-core neural network processor, heterogeneous parallel computing architecture and hardware intelligent computing engine, with the characteristics of programmability, high efficiency, intelligence upgrade, and so on.

In terms of performance, it is understood that the DeepEye1000 single chip can provide the programmable computing power of 2.0Tops, and its energy consumption has reached 2Tops/W, which is better than most competitors in the same industry. As a product based on industrial design standards, DeepEye1000 has been guaranteed in terms of reliability.

This is an AI processor with full stack capacity, the company also provides a unified programming model for CPU/GPU/NPU, and provides a unified quantization / compilation / deployment interface to achieve unified transformation and deployment in heterogeneous environments. Thanks to the company's full-stack AI capabilities in the chip, algorithm and tool chain, Yantian Lifei is able to provide developers with high-performance, easy to integrate and fast deployment of end-edge cloud solutions, providing comprehensive support for the AI industry.

Domestic suppliers in 5G RF field

In addition to AI, 5G is another focus of the new infrastructure. But like many areas such as FPGA, this is also a market that requires the efforts of domestic manufacturers. Especially in the radio frequency field which is closely related to 5G, domestic manufacturers have a long way to go. Guangxi Core Baxter, who participated in this summit, is a local participant in the radio frequency of 5G micro-base stations.

Zhang Haitao, chairman and general manager of Guangxi Core Baxter, pointed out that the characteristics of 5G (high bandwidth, low coverage) make macro base stations + micro base stations feasible. However, at present, 80% of the data traffic comes from indoor scenes, so indoor 5G signal coverage is the focus of the industry and the key to the development of related industries. Optimistic from the characteristics of 5G, this requires micro-base stations to do the coverage of this "last company". According to brokerage forecasts, the market scale of 5G micro-base stations is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan.

Due to the number of micro-base stations and the increase of radio frequency channels (MIMO), the market for RF power amplifiers for micro-base stations is growing rapidly. At present, only large international manufacturers (Skyworks, Qorvo) are deployed in the field of PA modules for micro-base stations, and domestic system manufacturers are in urgent need of domestic RF solutions. "Zhang Haitao said.

Core Baxter Microelectronics, founded in 2018, focuses on the RF front-end of the new generation of wireless communications (5G, WiFi6, AIOT), and is committed to extending the international leading high-end RF front-end technology to China and realizing domestic substitution. Zhang Haitao stressed that its ability to provide full-stack solutions, including a variety of process and device design capabilities, advanced packaging and process integration capabilities, is an important basis for the company to serve its customers.

From Zhang Haitao's introduction, we know that Core Baxter has the leading 5G micro base station power amplifier products in China, covering mainstream operating bands such as 4G LTE (1.8Ghz), 5G N41 (2.5GHz), 5G N78 (3.5GHz), 5G N79 (4.9GHz), etc., to meet the frequency band needs of 5G small base stations planned by China Mobile, Unicom and Telecom.

Thanks to its leading design, the product has excellent performance in system stability and anti-interference; through package structure optimization, the chip is thin and has high heat dissipation capacity; at the same time, it is also suitable for DPD system.

"among them, CB6318 is a representative product launched by the company for this market," Zhang Haitao said.

It is understood that this is a chip designed with Dorherty architecture, which can ensure both linearity and efficiency; in terms of technology, because of the use of GaAs HBT technology and SIP packaging, the best performance-to-price ratio of micro base station power amplifier is achieved; through SMD and LGA packaging, the standard 50 ohms input and output matching is achieved; in frequency band, it can support 3300Mhz-3600Mhz and meet the requirements of 5G Bands 22,42, N77 and N78. If it is optimized for DPD, its linearity can be improved.

"as one of the first micro-base station power amplifier devices launched in China, this chip has been verified and tested by 10 micro-base station customers, including micro-base station industry leaders; in addition, 5 + customers have verified small shipments, fully in line with the operator's micro-base station promotion pace," Zhang Haitao said.

Multi-point blooming in the field of wireless connection

If 5G and AI are the backbone of the new infrastructure, then wireless connectivity is its thread, and only with the close combination of the two can we build a rich and colorful technological world. At this forum, Boliu Intelligence and Furekun brought about the sharing of wireless connections, including WiFi and Bluetooth.

Liu Zhan, vice president of intelligent technology sales, first pointed out that as networking devices move from single-product intelligence to house-wide intelligence, and then to intelligent AI, this puts forward a two-in-one chip demand for WI-FI+BLE Combo for manufacturers. The company's low-power, high-reliability WI-FI+BLE5.0 Combo SoC BL602 based on RISC-V core is designed to solve this problem.

He pointed out that BL602 supports 802.11b BL602, which also supports the STA,SoftAP and Sniffer modes, as well as the 802.11b Universe WiFi Fielding BLE5.0 connection. The matching RISC-V CPU is adjustable between frequency 1~192MHz and also has the SRAM of 276KB.

SDIO,SPI,UART,I2C,PWM,ADC,DAC,IR and JTAG debug port are supported; in terms of performance, BL602 has a maximum transmit power 21dBm with a sensitivity of-98dBm; even if the performance is so strong, the dormant power consumption of this chip is only 0.5uA, the networking standby power consumption is only 80uA, and the cold start fast connection is only 90ms, which has ultra-low power consumption that other competitors do not have.

"it is worth mentioning that BL602 supports secure startup, security debugging, AES 128and256 encryption engine, WPA3, MD5, SHA-1/224/256, PKA (RSA/ECC) encryption engine," Liu added.

In order to meet the needs of future wireless connections, Broadstream Intelligence has also planned several products with higher integration, higher performance and lower power consumption, which will help developers succeed.

Niu Zhao, vice president of Shanghai Furekun Microelectronics, brought the company's sharing of dual-mode Bluetooth SoC.

Niu Zhao first pointed out that in the wearable market, smartwatches with functions such as traditional watches, bracelets, Bluetooth music players, and Bluetooth calls will gradually replace traditional watches as a common commodity for everyone to wear. Other wearable products will focus more on specific scenes, such as medical temperature bracelets, sports equipment, children's watches and so on. In this case, a variety of requirements are put forward for smartwatches.

As a leading wireless communication chip supplier specializing in the research and development of chips in smart wear, smart home, industrial Internet of things and other areas. Furekun launched the FR508x series of chips to meet the emerging demand.
Niu Zhao pointed out that the FR508x series dual-mode Bluetooth SOC uses the dual-core design of ARM Cortex-M3 48MHz + DSP 156MHz, with 512KB SRAM and 2MB PSRAM built in.

In addition, the chip also has built-in audio Codec, supports 1-channel analog MIC,4 digital MIC,2 analog output, built-in PMU, external interface including UART*2, SPI*1,QSPI*2, I2C*2, I2SRAM 1Magic SDIO1USBOTGRAM 1; plus built-in power management module PMU,BR to keep connected 500ms Sniff average current

Compared with its competitors, this chip takes the lead in many areas, which allows the company to gain customer recognition in many areas.

A hundred flowers blossom in the field of power supply

At this year's Songshan Lake Summit Forum, there are also several power experts who provide products that are essential to the current scientific and technological world.

First of all, it focuses on the core technology in the fields of intelligent power management chip, wireless power transmission chip, data transmission processing chip, wireless signal processing chip and microprocessor chip. Peng Feng, marketing director of Yingjixin Technology Co., Ltd., pointed out that as a leading company in the field of digital-analog hybrid SoC, the company had a compound growth rate of 151% from 2015 to 2019, and one year after its launch, the company occupied the first position in the global market in the field of mobile power SOC subdivision power supply.

As shown in the picture above, Yingjixin is now focusing on the following areas. Facing the rapidly rising fast-charging market, the company has launched a high-power fast-charging chip IP5388 that supports 45W high-power output, which is growing rapidly in the supply chain.

According to reports, this chip is fully integrated with high-power MOS two-way Buck/boost, as well as FCP SCP two-way fast charge, VOOC two-way fast charge, PD two-way fast charge, AFC two-way fast charge, SFCP two-way fast charge and PPS, PD-DRP two-way fast charge, which can meet the needs of multiple fast charging protocols with one chip.

In addition, the chip also integrates charge Pump external driver Nmos (path) and digital tube driver, which can help simplify developers' BOM design.

Jiang Yanbo, general manager of Dongguan Sai Micro Electronics, introduced the company's ultra-low static power buck DC/DC--CW6601 for IoT applications, wearable devices and 5G mobile devices.

Jiang Yanbo first pointed out that the company is established by senior people in the battery and semiconductor industry, integrating years of experience in the field of electrochemistry and semiconductors to provide customers with innovative and high value-added battery power semiconductor solutions. From many aspects, CW6601 can meet the low power consumption, small package and high performance requirements of many kinds of wearable devices.

From his introduction, we know that Saiwei's chip has an input range of 2.5V-5.5V and is compatible with applications such as lithium batteries, lithium subbatteries, double dry batteries and button batteries. In terms of current, the maximum output current is 500mA to meet the diversified needs. The encapsulation of its WCSP8 0.8mm*1.6mm makes it more popular in many application scenarios. Help end devices improve their battery life.

Mr. Zhang Shuchun, R & D director of Xinzhou Technology, introduced the company's buck DCDC power converter SCT2450Q with low EMI and low power consumption for the automotive electronics market.

According to Zhang Shuchun, there are huge market opportunities in the automotive electronics market, especially in the automotive market, where the space is even more gratifying. Even if it is subdivided into the automotive power management chip market, the market space is huge enough. Some of the products of Xinzhou Technology, which was founded in 2016, are aimed at this field.

When it comes to cars and power DC/DC conversion. According to Zhang Shuchun, this market faces many challenges, such as high efficiency, high power density, deduction input voltage range, low EMI characteristics and low static current. Especially in terms of reliability, because of the high requirements of the car itself, we can imagine the need for the reliability of chips in this field.

As an expert in this field, Xizhou Technology has launched SCT solutions. Thanks to its advantages in power density, efficiency, voltage range, overvoltage protection, frequency regulation, enhanced EMI suppression and Dijingtai current, the SCT series has been highly recognized by customers. The company also has the confidence to become a domestic expert in this field.

Domestic chips that make devices aware of the world

In addition to the above traditional areas, in this forum, we have also seen a breakthrough in the field of perception of local chip companies. The spacer intelligence of the world's first uA-level ultra-low-power microwave radar sensor is one of them. According to the company's founder and CEO Dr. Lin Shuiyang, radar can be used in many fields, and the global competition is extremely fierce.

"AT5815, the latest ultra-low power 5.8GHz radar sensor launched by Space Intelligence, has the high performance of radar sensors and the ultra-high performance-to-price ratio of human sensor sensors, and can perfectly replace the current mainstream infrared pyroelectric sensors. It is widely used in intelligent furniture, intelligent lighting, Internet of things and other scenarios that require human presence induction," Lin Shuiyang said.

He further pointed out that the power supply voltage of this chip is 2.5V~5V, the working current is 50-80uA, and it can be powered by battery. AT5815 owners have a clear advantage over competitors' products of the same type.

Compared with PIR human sensor, the advantage of AT5815 low power radar sensor is also quite obvious. This lays a foundation for its future application in the fields of intelligent lighting, smart home and intelligent security.

"our vision is to make everything easier to perceive and smarter to connect," Lin concluded.

Hu Yingzhe, co-founder and CEO of Zhuhai Purin Core Chi, brought the TWS headphone into the ear + pressure sensor detection chip.

Hu Yingzhe said that TWS shipments are still soaring, but with the development of TWS headphones, it has brought challenges in ear testing. He said that if the light sensing scheme is adopted, it will face the disadvantages of difficult installation, low yield and high cost, but if traditional capacitors are used, there will be problems such as temperature, sweat and poor compatibility of the ear canal. For this reason, Pulinski believes that the sense of pressure is a better way to solve these problems.

Hu Yingzhe further pointed out that they have introduced pressure sensing technology with the advantages of high sensitivity, low delay and ultra-low power consumption, which is compatible with a variety of pressure sensing methods. In the specific application, several advantages such as stability and reliability, convenient assembly and rapid introduction are shown incisively and vividly.

Based on this chip, Pulin will be able to support a number of applications, and the company will make more layouts in the future to further embrace these markets. The high sensitive capacitance sensor chip and intelligent voice chip independently developed by Pingxinchi can reach the international leading level, and the chips and solutions are widely used in smart home, cost-free electronics and other fields. "Hu Yingzhe said.

Summary

From the perspective of the current development situation, compared with foreign leading companies, local chips still have a big gap. However, after the magic of 2020, looking forward to the future, we hope that more domestic chips can rise from the ground and provide the most comprehensive support to the local industry.