A hard battle for chips is still to come

　　Yu Chengdong's Flag is still down.

　　As the executive director of Huawei and CEO of the smart car solution BU, "Big Mouth" Yu Chengdong has always liked to raise his flag in public. It's just that in the matter of selling cars, it was less than half a year after he set the flag of "sprinting 300,000 vehicles in annual sales". This flag, which carried the market expectations of Wenjie, was pushed down by himself.

　　"It's less than 300,000 units at all."

　　In a recent media interview program, Yu Chengdong seemed to have a little lack of confidence in the previous sales expectations, and one of the very important reasons was that he believed that there was a problem in the chip supply chain. "It's a miracle to sell 100,000 cars in the first year. In the past, a chip was only 20 or 30 yuan, but now it has risen to more than 2,000 yuan. A car uses 9 chips, which is a huge loss."

　　Not only new entrants like Huawei, but also Toyota, the largest automaker in Dongying, is struggling in this round of chip tug-of-war.

　　Toyota stopped production, Huawei "worried", and the Shanghai epidemic made the chip crisis worse

　　Yesterday, the company announced its global production plan for May. Due to the shortage of key components such as chips, its global production will be reduced to 700,000 units in May, a 10% reduction, and nine factories in Japan will also be temporarily suspended. According to the latest statistics from Auto Forecast Solution, in 2022, a total of 1.5 million new cars will be reduced in production due to the chip supply crisis.

　　The first chip city in the Mainland

　　Chips are a big topic.

　　Its industry span is wide, and the industry chain is also sufficiently subdivided. Upstream, mainly equipment, materials and software; midstream manufacturing layer, including chip design, production, packaging and testing; downstream is the application of chips.

　　In the post-Moore era, the technology war has become more and more intense, and the dimensions of the competition among chip players have become wider and wider, but Shanghai and its radiated Yangtze River Delta region have almost single-handedly supported half of China's chips. Regardless of upstream materials and equipment, or midstream design, production, and packaging and testing, Shanghai has a layout in almost key areas of the chip industry chain.

　　This is a must for big factories.

　　TSMC has a large semiconductor factory in the suburbs of Songjiang, which is mainly responsible for 8-inch wafer foundry. Its importance is as important as the Nanjing factory and the planned Arizona factory.

　　SMIC, known as the "hope of the whole village" in my country's chip leader, Shanghai is its headquarters, a proper base, and its strategic importance goes without saying.

　　Hua Hong Group, the second largest wafer chip foundry in mainland China after SMIC, is also based in Shanghai. Its core business is mainly distributed in four bases in Pudong Jinqiao, Zhangjiang, Kangqiao and Jiangsu Wuxi. In recent years, almost The orders are full, and the production line runs at full capacity for a long time.

　　Take the integrated circuit as an example.

　　According to public data, Shanghai's current integrated circuit industry accounts for a quarter of the country's total, with 40% of the country's industrial talents and more than 700 key industry enterprises. Lingang, Zhangjiang, Caohejing, Songjiang and Minhang Zizhu have concentrated industrial distribution. In the past 2021, the scale of Shanghai's integrated circuit industry has reached 250 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20%.

　　It is no exaggeration to say that in terms of the current state of the IC industry in mainland China, Shanghai will remain the first in chip manufacturing for a long time to come.

　　There is also the irreplaceability of the industrial dimension.

　　Many readers may know that my country's chip manufacturing has been "stuck" by upstream lithography machines for a long time. This is the most core equipment in the field of semiconductor manufacturing. It can be called a collection of top technologies in many fields. The reason why the Dutch giant ASML has been naked and high-profile monopoly is that its own technical advantages are strong enough, and the United States is sometimes mixed in.

　　In such a difficult environment, it is not easy for Shanghai Microelectronics to be at the forefront of domestic production in the field of lithography machine mass production and technology.

　　Speaking of chips being "stuck" by foreign countries, semiconductor materials upstream of the industry are also one of them, such as semiconductor silicon wafers. Shanghai Silicon from Shanghai has torn a hole in the material monopoly and broke through a number of technical barriers. Currently, it can supply semiconductor silicon wafers ranging from 100mm to 300mm, breaking the industrial problem of domestic large silicon wafers relying on foreign countries.

　　The hard battle of production under the blockade

　　Bloomberg recently quoted a set of data from the National Bureau of Statistics that my country's chip production in the first quarter fell by 4.1% year-on-year, and in March, which was affected by the epidemic, it fell by 5.1%.

　　This is the worst moment for my country's chip production since 2019. The reason is that first, the sluggish demand for consumer electronics products has gradually spread to the chip production side, and second, the epidemic blockade in Shanghai has directly affected first-line production. In fact, my country's chip production has been slowing down since 2021. According to the cruel status quo of the current production stagnation, the production data in April will not be too optimistic.

　　Shanghai, pull one hair and move the whole body.

　　In order to maintain uninterrupted chip production, wafer foundry giant Shanghai Huahong and Shanghai Silicon subsidiary Xinsheng Semiconductor have become the first batch of chip companies that are strictly closed to "only in and out". The production line is covered with sleeping bags or makeshift beds. The employees are isolated in the closed-loop operation of the factory, and the limited manpower is responsible for the high-load operation on the production capacity side.

　　Shanghai Hua Hong once issued a press release in early April, which described the last few hours before Pudong closed in this way (the author has slightly omitted):

　　Thousands of Huahong people suddenly threw down their dishes and utensils, and threw their clothes and toiletries into their suitcases in just two hours. Worrying and guilt, they rushed back to the factory just before the closure of Pudong, gathered in their respective departments, and started a new journey of more than 6,000 warriors stationed in the factory.

　　The 6,000 warriors described in the Shanghai Huahongtong press release are just a microcosm of the tens of thousands of chip workers in Magic Capital, and even the chip workers in Kunshan: the TSMC factory in Songjiang, some employees work from home, and some employees use factories and dormitories. Closed-loop management of "two points and one line"; Xinsheng Semiconductor also hurriedly organized a team of nearly 400 people on the eve of "sealing and control", and entered the company in the early morning of March 28, maintaining the basic manpower required for factory production.... ..

　　Inside and outside the factory, two worlds from now on.

　　It's just that the world inside the factory directly affects the production trend of downstream industries such as technology electronics and automobiles in the country; and the material allocation, upstream supply and logistics efficiency of the world outside directly determine whether the first-line factories with closed-loop management can maintain the most basic According to feedback from many chip manufacturers, the stagnation of logistics and transportation will lead to delays in delivery. Judging from the current freight status, this obstacle will continue until early May at the earliest.

　　The data shows that the Shanghai Economic and Information Commission has recently issued more than 100 passes of various types to chip manufacturers, solving the problem of transporting more than 500 tons of raw materials.

　　The epidemic has brought a new challenge to the chip supply chain. The logistics problem is not a problem for the chip industry. We once reported in "All domestic car companies stop production? Global Supply Chain or Stomp on the Brake" analyzed the impact of current logistics stagnation on the industrial chain——

　　The current freight has become a collective nightmare for the entire supply chain, especially truck transportation, which is not only a bridge linking sea and air transportation, but also the absolute lifeline of the first and last kilometers in the field of freight transportation.

　　Bloomberg recently quoted a data study by Susquehanna of Haina Financial Group. The delivery time of the chip industry (the time difference from ordering chips to delivery) has increased by 2 days in the past March, reaching 26.6 weeks. The resulting urban risk control will cast a new shadow on the April data.

　　"Whitelisting" is just the beginning

　　As an important chip town with influence radiating across the country, the process of restarting the production of Shanghai chip companies also affects the hearts of the upstream and downstream industry chains. On April 16, the Shanghai Economic and Information Commission issued the "Shanghai Industrial Enterprises Resumption of Work and Production Epidemic Prevention and Control" Guidelines (First Edition)", the "white list" of the first batch of 666 key enterprises to resume work and production was also announced.

　　In this first batch of "whitelist" catalogs, at least more than 60 companies are closely related to integrated circuits. SMIC's resumed production includes SMIC Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. and SMIC Southern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing. Co., Ltd., Shanghai Huahong is included in the list are Huahong Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Shanghai Huali Microelectronics Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Huali Integrated Circuit Manufacturing Co., Ltd.... including chip materials, packaging and testing It can be seen that the priority of integrated circuits in this list is as important as that of automobile manufacturing.

　　Almost at the same time as Shanghai, Suzhou Kunshan also released the first batch of production resumption lists, and many chip companies are on the list. However, a whitelist is only a pass for the restart of production. The pressure of the epidemic is a protracted battle, and the "operating rate" is only a measure of the improvement of production. The supply chain difficulties and other problems after the resumption of production may be more difficult than the lockdown Times are more complicated.

　　At the Taiwan 2022 ERSO Award ceremony held on April 19, Peng Shuanglang, chairman of AUO, just mentioned the Shanghai epidemic in a media interview. In his opinion, this round of epidemic blockade has a far greater impact on Taiwan than last year. It is even more serious when encountering power cuts. Even if the restrictions on resumption of work for some companies have been relaxed, it will take at least a quarter for the supply chain to return to the previous normal level.

　　Time is one aspect, but he also revealed a real dilemma: there is not enough manpower, and it is difficult for materials and upstream materials at the supply chain level to be in place.

　　Take chip manufacturing as an example.

　　Chip testing has high requirements on instruments and equipment. Almost every link requires employees to be stationed in the factory. How to ensure that manpower is in place under the epidemic? In some labor-intensive production workshops, how to avoid mutual infection in closed factories? If the production of upstream suppliers is stagnant, or the logistics problems persist for a long time, and the inventory of parts and components bottoms out, how to do a good job in purchasing Plan B?

　　It is worth mentioning that it is not only the production that affects the chip industry, but also the market demand for consumer electronics products. "C Dimension" believes that the follow-up impact of the Shanghai epidemic will definitely be more serious than that in Wuhan two years ago, and the impact on the chip industry chain is also long-term, and there are many uncertainties.

　　On the one hand, the epidemic in Wuhan and the city blockade do not drag down the entire Yangtze River Delta like Shanghai. You can refer to the impact on the manufacturing industry in Suzhou.

　　On the other hand, compensatory and deferred consumption will also decrease. In the second half of 2020, the auto market will grow, and the epidemic will increase the awareness of car ownership and increase the demand for first purchases. The explosive growth of micro electric vehicles is one of them. The follow-up compensatory consumption in Shanghai will be affected by greater economic losses. Affected, including chip-related consumer electronics and automobiles.

　　A tough battle for chips is still to come.