Under the repeated epidemic, the world suffers from "chip shortage", and the development of semiconductor industry is concerned. At the 4th CIIE being held in Shanghai, industry insiders pointed out that, based on the two attributes of global production base and huge market, China is very important for the stability of the global semiconductor industry "two chains", especially the role of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is worth expecting.

At the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Semiconductor Industry International Cooperation Forum held during the CIIF, Zhang Guanbin, deputy Director General of the Department of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Commerce of China, said that since the outbreak of COVID-19, living at home, working and studying have further strengthened the demand of various industries for the Internet of everything, and highlighted the importance of the semiconductor industry. At the same time, higher requirements have been set for ensuring stable and smooth industrial and supply chains, accurately connecting supply and demand, and managing market expectations.

Zhang Yujing, president of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Mechanical and Electronic Products, also said that since the epidemic, the demand for information and communication technology has increased, resulting in a continuous supply shortage in the upstream semiconductor industry. Due to the high division of labor in the industry in Europe, the United States and Asian countries, the problem of "lack of core" caused by the local epidemic has had a great impact on the production and shipment of the automobile, electronics and other downstream industries.

China is a major manufacturing and trading country, but also an important production base and consumer market for the semiconductor industry. China's role in maintaining the stability of the global semiconductor industry chain and supply chain has attracted much attention.

Zhang Guanbin introduced that in 2020, the scale of China's IC industry reached 884.8 billion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of nearly 20% during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, four times that of the global growth in the same period. Last year, China imported 350 billion US dollars of integrated circuits and exported more than 110 billion US dollars of them, making it the largest single trade product in China. Among them, imports account for nearly one third of the total global IC trade, providing a broad market stage for many international semiconductor enterprises.

"Semiconductors are a highly globalized industry, and strengthening international cooperation to promote the global flow of products is crucial to the healthy and rapid development of the industry." Zhang Guanbin said that China has always been open to, supportive of and encouraging cooperation in the semiconductor industry, which not only serves the interests of China but also serves the common interests of all countries in the world. Driven by emerging applications such as 5G, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and smart connected vehicles, China's semiconductor market still has broad room for growth.

In addition to the "two-chain obstruction" caused by the pandemic, the semiconductor industry itself is also facing technical challenges. The number of transistors that can fit on an integrated circuit doubles about every 18 months -- a Moore's law that has become familiar throughout the history of semiconductors.

However, Pan Xiaoming, senior vice president and president of Greater China at global chip giant AMD, pointed out that the growth rate of Moore's Law is now slowing down, with transistor density only doubling every three years and energy efficiency doubling every 3.6 years. It now takes longer to mature and stabilize each new stage of the process, and overall costs have increased significantly.

The communications industry is the main driver of semiconductor industry development. Huang Bing, technical director of ZTE Corp. 's technical planning Department, mentioned that the development of 5G technology beyond expectations has generated massive data, especially the application represented by artificial intelligence has continued to increase the demand for computing power, superposing the bottleneck of 5G high power consumption, highlighting the indispensability of advanced technology chips, while personal information and data security also put forward more requirements for chip security.

The Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is the largest consumer and application market of China's chip industry, and is regarded as the "third pole" in the geographical pattern of China's IC industry, besides the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Yangtze River Delta. The region is expected to boost technological innovation in the industry.

Ma Hua, deputy director general of the Department of Commerce of Guangdong Province, said that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has a solid economic foundation, a sound industrial system, an active innovation economy, and a huge market scale and potential. There are more than 40,000 national high-tech enterprises gathered here, and the R&D investment and the number of valid invention patents rank the first place in China. The number of PCT international patent applications accounts for about half of China's total. It is also a fertile ground for investment and entrepreneurship, with huge opportunities.

Hou Mingjuan, global vice president of Qualcomm, also said that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has obvious advantages in the development of 5G industry due to its strong economic strength, complete industrial system and China's leading infrastructure network. The combination of 5G and AI is accelerating the digital transformation of many industries, and will strongly promote innovation in the semiconductor industry while enabling a new intelligent and connected future.