JW Insights believes:
- Affected by the recovery of downstream applications after the epidemic (data center, 5G, automotive electronics, industrial) and the combination of capacity supply and chip price increases, the global memory chip market will return to a high growth track in 2021, and the market size will reach a new high in 2022;
- With the intensification of geopolitical influence, the importance of mastering independent and controllable storage technology has gradually become prominent, the gradual promotion of domestic substitution in the future and the improvement of the self-sufficiency rate of integrated circuits, the mainland memory chip industry will usher in new development opportunities;
- Most of the domestic storage companies are in the rapid growth period, through strategic planning, mainly from the small and medium-sized capacity market, revenue and volume after the steady growth of large-capacity research and development. With the help of domestic integrated circuit industry policy, capital dongfeng, and domestic substitution opportunities, it is expected to usher in greater development space;
- With the gradual withdrawal or transfer of production capacity by overseas manufacturers, mainland enterprises are expected to gain market space and fierce competition in the small and medium-sized capacity field of NOR Flash, and the diversified competition pattern is highlighted;
- The automotive market is gradually becoming a new blue ocean for the storage industry, and many domestic storage companies are accelerating the development and introduction of in-vehicle products, and the introduction cycle into the automotive market is shortening.
As an important part of the electronic system, memory chips play a key role in ensuring the reliability and security of information storage. After a brief slowdown, the storage industry is expected to return to a high-growth trajectory this year and set new records in terms of market size.
The mainland storage industry started late and relied heavily on imports. However, after several years of development, there has now been a considerable breakthrough and gradually breaking the monopoly of overseas enterprises. In the major storage fields such as DRAM, NAND Flash, NOR Flash, EEPROM, etc., leading enterprises in the industry or market segment have emerged.
Under the combined effect of many factors such as the surge in demand, the shortage of production capacity, and the continuous development of new application markets in the post-epidemic era, the storage industry has shown a high degree of prosperity, and the performance of related storage companies in the mainland has also benefited from this, and last year's revenue has increased significantly.
At the end of 2021, JW Insights launched the "Top 100 Chinese Semiconductor Enterprises" list (hereinafter referred to as the "Top 100"), this article focuses on the main storage companies in the top 100 list, and analyzes the current situation, opportunities and challenges of domestic storage companies from the aspects of technology development, market trends and competitive landscape.
First, the storage industry is back on a high-growth track
1. Technical overview
Memory chips, also known as semiconductor memory, are one of the basic products of integrated circuits with the widest application area and the highest market proportion, and occupy an extremely important position in the integrated circuit market.
According to the function, the way the data is read and the principle of data storage, the memory chip can be divided into volatile memory chips (VOLATILE Memory, VM, data loss after power failure) and non-volatile memory chips (NVM, data is not lost after power failure).
Volatile memory chips are commonly dram (dynamic random storage) and SRAM (static random storage), which are usually used with the CPU to provide the CPU with storage of intermediate data during operations. SRAM read and write speed is fast, power consumption is small, but the cost is high, generally used in the cache, DRAM integration is high, generally used as memory.
Non-volatile memory chips include Flash (flash memory) and ROM (read only memory). Flash memory chips are divided into NAND Flash and NOR Flash. NAND Flash has a large capacity and is mainly used for large-capacity data storage; NOR Flash has a small capacity and is usually used to store boot software programs. At present, the most widely used ROM is mainly EEPROM, which has a smaller storage capacity and is usually used to access a small amount of program code.
At present, NAND, NOR and DRAM are still the mainstream memory chips in the market. In addition, emerging memory chip technologies such as MRAM (magnetoresistive memory), RRAM (resistive memory), PRAM (phase change memory), and FRAM (ferroelectric memory) are also evolving. Although these technologies have their own advantages, the current cost and process difficulty of new memory are high, and they have not achieved scale development, which cannot replace the market dominance of existing storage technologies in the short term.
2. Global market
According to the forecast of the World Semiconductor Trade Association (WSTS), the growth rate of the global semiconductor market will rise from 6.8% in 2020 to 25.6% in 2021, reaching a market size of $553 billion, the largest increase since the growth of 31.8% in 2010, with the largest growth contributed by storage.
In 2021, the market size of memory chips reached $158 billion, reaching a scale similar to the high point of 2018, accounting for 35.05% of the market size of the entire integrated circuit industry, and the market size of logic chips, microprocessors and analog chips accounted for 32.49%, 16.82% and 15.64% respectively. Since 2016, memory chips have surpassed the largest proportion of logic circuits for several consecutive years, becoming the branch with the highest proportion of sales in the global integrated circuit market.
JW Insights believes that the global memory chip market has shown a downward trend in recent years since it peaked in 2018, and growth has slowed down. With the recovery of downstream applications after the epidemic (data center, 5G, automotive electronics, industrial) and the impact of production capacity supply and chip price increases, in 2021, the global memory chip market will return to the high growth track and surpass the high point of 2018 in 2022.
According to IC Insights, the global memory chip market size will reach $155.2 billion, $180.4 billion and $219.6 billion from 2021 to 2023, with an increase of 22.5%, 16.2% and 21.7% respectively.
Among the many memory chips, the largest market size is still DRAM and NAND Flash, the global DRAM market size in 2021 accounts for about 56% of the entire storage market (about $86.9 billion), the NAND Flash market size accounts for about 41% of the entire storage market (about $63.6 billion), nor Flash market size accounts for about 2% of the entire storage market (about $3.1 billion), and other memory chips (EEPROM, EPROM, ROM, SRAM). etc.) accounted for 1% (approximately $1.6 billion).
3. Mainland market
As the "granary" of the electronic system and the carrier of data information, memory chips play a key role in ensuring the reliability and security of important information storage, but at present, the self-sufficiency rate of memory chips in mainland China is low, and a large number of high-end chips are obtained through imports.
According to the data released by the General Administration of Customs, China's integrated circuit imports in 2021 will be 2,793.48 billion yuan. Among them, the import amount of memory chips has accounted for about one-third of the total imports of integrated circuits for many years, and the scale is huge.
Mainland China is one of the world's most important memory chip consumer markets, and the mainland memory chip market has occupied more than 50% of the global memory chip market share for many years. With the continuous improvement of the level of electronic manufacturing, the continuous emergence of emerging application fields such as 5G, big data, Internet of Things, and automotive electronics has spawned a huge demand in the memory chip market, and the overall market size has maintained rapid growth in recent years.
According to CCID Consultants' estimates, the market size of mainland memory chips will reach 549.4 billion yuan in 2021. It accounts for 59% of the global memory chip market share.
JW Insights believes that with the intensification of geopolitical influence, the importance of mastering independent and controllable storage technology has gradually become prominent, and the gradual advancement of domestic substitution and the improvement of integrated circuit self-sufficiency rate in the future will usher in new development opportunities for the mainland memory chip industry.
4. Competitive landscape
At present, the global storage chip market is mainly occupied by South Korea, Europe and the United States and Taiwan enterprises, with a high concentration of heads. Overseas manufacturers occupy most of the market share with their first-mover advantage and brand advantage in the terminal market. Especially in the field of large capacity, as well as leading technology and high profit margins such as automobiles and industrial control, the market position is relatively stable.
The mainland semiconductor storage industry started late, and after several years of development, domestic enterprises have made breakthroughs in the field of storage. Not only in the mainstream DRAM, NAND Flash field to accelerate the catch-up, in the NOR Flash, EEPROM and other fields also continue to gain advantages. It has appeared in various storage fields to directly compete with well-known companies and break through overseas technology monopolies, and gradually narrow the gap with overseas manufacturers in technology.
In the list of the top 100, enterprises involved in the storage field (IDM and Fabless) mainly include Gigabit Innovation, Changjiang Storage, Changxin Storage, Puran Shares, Beijing Junzheng, Juchen Shares, Fudan Microelectronics, Shanghai Beiling, Dongxin Shares, Hengshuo Semiconductor, etc. Among them, Yangtze River Storage, Gigabit Innovation and Changxin Storage ranked 7th, 8th and 10th among the top ten.
Domestic storage enterprises are mostly in the rapid growth period, through strategic planning, mainly from the small and medium-sized capacity market to cut, revenue and volume after the steady growth of large-capacity research and development. With the help of domestic integrated circuit industry policies, capital dongfeng, and domestic substitution opportunities, it is expected to usher in greater development space.
Second, DRAM ushered in a golden 10 years
DRAM realizes data storage by using the presence or absence of stored charge in the capacitor to represent binary bits (b), which has the characteristics of fast read and write speed, and is often used for the running memory of the system hardware to process the instructions and data in the system.
DRAM can be divided into DDR (Double Data Rate) series, LPDDR (Low Power Double Data Rate) series and GDDR (Graphics Double Data Rate) series, HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) series.
According to downstream requirements, DRAM can be divided into:
1) Standard DRAM, mainly DDR, used in PC, server and other fields;
2) Mobile DRAM, mainly LPDDR, for low-power scenarios such as smart phones and digital cameras;
3) Niche DRAM is mainly used in LCD TV, digital set-top box, red Blu-ray player, network communication and other products;
4) GDDR will generally be matched to use high-performance graphics cards for common use;
5) HBM, on the other hand, stacks multiple DDR chips together and encapsulates them together with GPUs to achieve a large-capacity, high-bay DDR combination array.
With the rise of cloud computing and big data, the data capacity and processing speed of servers are constantly improving, which has promoted the upgrading and iteration of DDR technology. With the continuous reduction of the process process, the overall power consumption of the product is reduced.
DRAM products are currently in the 10-20nm process manufacturing stage. In 2021, the three major memory manufacturers Samsung, Hynix, and Micron will successively mass-produce 1αnm (10nm-12nm) DRAM products, and it is expected that the 10nm process process will be the mainstream process level of DRAM for a long time to come.
At present, the mainstream technical specifications on the market are DDR4 and LPDDR4, and the internationally leading DRAM products have reached DDR5/LPDDR5. In the future, DRAM products will continue to develop in the direction of improving product processes and improving product performance.
2. Market analysis
DRAM occupies the largest market for memory chips. According to IC Insights forecasts, the global DRAM market will account for about 56% of the total storage market in 2021 (about $86.9 billion).
DrAM market share is mainly due to a wide range of downstream applications, mobile phones, computers and servers and other electronic devices involving data need to be equipped with DRAM, such as smart phones equipped with 8Gb DRAM and 128Gb NAND Flash, the market demand is high.
Guojin Securities analysis pointed out that due to the 1αnm process for the first time to fully use EUV lithography technology, AI server system for HBM high-frequency wide memory demand increased, server CPU accelerated iteration update to 5/3nm, DDR5/DDR6 (more than DDR4 consumption of more production capacity) and L3/L5 autonomous driving technology on the road and other comprehensive factors, the DRAM market in the next 10 years, long-term in the state of insufficient supply, revenue compound growth rate will reach 21%-22%. It is expected that the DRAM memory industry will enter the golden age of the next 10 years.
Over the years, DRAM has shown an oligopoly pattern, with Samsung, Micron and Hynix occupying more than 95% of the market.
Changxin Storage represents the mainland mainstream DRAM technology level, outstanding design capabilities, positioning large capacity standard DRAM products, has launched 19nm DDR4/LPDDR4 products, the first in the mainland, the world's fourth DRAM manufacturers using the process below 20nm, 17nm DDR5/LPDDR5 memory chip is expected to be launched this year. The Prospective Industry Research Institute predicts that with the increase in production capacity, it is expected to reach a market share of 3% in 2022.
As an IDM enterprise, Changxin Storage is regarded as the only hope for a completely domestic alternative to China's DRAM industry in the short term. The recently released Hefei government work report shows that Changxin Storage's revenue will increase by 5 times in 2021.
3. Niche DRAM
In recent years, with the adjustment of the strategy of Samsung, Hynix and other storage manufacturers, they have successively withdrawn from low- and medium-capacity DRAM (capacity transfer to CIS), South Asia Branch, Lijidian, etc. have shifted to logic FOUNDRies, and Changxin Storage has mainly attacked 19nm/17nm low-power mobile phone large-capacity DRAM, etc., making DDR2 512Mb/1Gb, DDR3 1-2Gb and other low- and medium-capacity DRAM demand exceeding supply.
Affected by this, the price of niche DRAM is expected to rise, and it is expected that the price of niche DRAM is expected to rise by more than 50% for the whole year of 2021.
Niche DRAM accounts for about 8%-10% of the total DRAM market size and about $6-8 billion in market space. It is expected that the niche DRAM will reach a market size of 10 billion US dollars in 2023, and the downstream applications mainly include consumer, automotive, and industrial control fields.
Niche DRAM adopts a relatively mature process, mainly DDR3/LPDDR3. Small and medium-sized capacity niche DRAM is mainly used in digital TV, tablet, optical cat (single-port optical transceiver) (global annual output of 170 million units, domestic 110 million units), routers (domestic annual output of 200 million units), white electricity, network set-top boxes and other products, the market space is large, the demand is relatively stable.
In recent years, with the application and rise of smart speakers (2021 global annual output of 200 million units, cagringr is expected to be 30%), sweepers (estimated annual output of 40 million units), intelligent monitoring and other smart home products, AIoT devices, 5G base stations, automotive electronics, etc. have driven strong global demand for niche DRAM.
The leading manufacturers in the field of niche DRAM are Winbond Electronics and South Asia Branch in Taiwan, etc., using the IDM model, and the product process is 20nm. In the top 100 list, domestic enterprises involved in the DRAM field generally adopt the Fabless model and focus on the niche DRAM product market of DDR4/LPDDR4 and below.
4. Major enterprises in mainland China
Gigabit Innovation cut into the DRAM track last year, mass-produced the first self-developed 19nm 4GB DDR4 has been mass-produced last year, Changxin storage OEM, to achieve design, tapeout, packaging and testing, verification of the national production. At present, 17nm DDR3 is currently under development, which is expected to contribute revenue this year for scenarios such as the Internet of Things (set-top boxes, routers), webcams, televisions, and other consumer categories.
JW Insights believes that with the advancement of advanced processes and the guarantee of Changxin's storage capacity, the accumulation of customers in the niche storage field (NOR Flash) for many years and domestic substitution opportunities, Gigabit Innovation is expected to quickly open up the situation in the niche DRAM market. In the top 100 list, according to the financial report data released by Gigabit Innovation, the revenue in 2021 was 8.510 billion yuan.
Xi'an Unigroup Guoxin has launched 38nm-25nm, 1-8GB capacity DDR/LPDDR-DDR4/LPDDR4 products, and DDR5 for servers has been trial production, mainly used in the cloud and big data industry.
TEC focuses on small and medium-capacity general-purpose memory chips, one of the few manufacturers in China that can provide memory chip solutions such as NAND, NOR, DRAM, etc., and the DRAM business accounts for a small proportion of revenue (7%), mainly by the acquired Korean company Fidelix.
The main products of Dongxin co., LTD. 38nm/25nm 1-4GB capacity of DDR3, 256Mb-2Gb LPDDR1/2 have achieved mass production, Liji Electric FOUNDRY, 25nm LPDDR4x is in research and development, the product is still in the introduction period, the overall sales scale is small (2019 market share of 0.16%). In the list of the top 100, according to the financial report data provided by Dongxin, the revenue in 2021 is 1.139 billion yuan.
JW Insights believes that compared with niche DRAM Taiwan enterprises such as Winbond and Nanyake covering DDR2-DDR4 and LPDDR-LPDDR4/4X complete category coverage, as well as having 20xnm-10xnm product independent development capabilities, the mainstream process node of mainland enterprises is 3xnm-20nm, which has a certain gap in process, capacity and transmission speed.
5. Auto dram market
Among the emerging applications of DRAM, in-vehicle storage is one of the most promising markets. According to HIS and IDC, automotive DRAM and NAND will reach a market size of $8.5 billion and $6.1 billion in 2025 with an annual growth rate of 33% and 37%, respectively.
Autonomous driving, intelligent cockpit, etc. will drive a massive increase in the amount of automotive data, and the corresponding need for larger capacity storage to meet the demand, DRAM and NAND will become the main memory chips used in future cars.
The data shows that in 2021, each car will need about 3.5-4Gb of DRAM for in-car audio and video and ADAS. The new Model S Plaid and long-range models start at least 20GB of DRAM. Memory bit capacity per car is expected to increase from 3.5-4.0 GB DRAM in 2021 to 50-55 GB DRAM in 2030.
After Beijing Junzheng completed the acquisition of Beijing Silicon Cheng (ISSI) in 2020, it has become a leading enterprise in mainland vehicle regulation storage. Beijing Silicon Storage's storage business includes SRAM, DRAM and Flash, with DRAM as the main business, targeting the automotive, industrial and medical and high-end consumer markets. In the automotive DRAM segment, Micron ranked first with a 45% share, and ISSI ranked second, accounting for about 15% of the market.
Beijing Junzheng is currently mainly DDR3 and DDR4/LPDDR4 products in the vehicle regulation market, and the latest process reaches 25nm.
Industry analysis pointed out that automotive memory chips have high requirements for reliability and safety, which is reflected in a wider temperature range and a longer service life. Product lead times are long, iterations are slow, and prices are stable. Therefore, even if mainstream memory manufacturers such as Samsung, Hynix, Winbond Electronics and Nanyake have been introducing in the direction of vehicle specification storage for many years, it is still difficult to shake the industry position of Micron and Beijing Junzheng/ISSI in the field of automotive storage.
Third, small and medium-sized capacity NAND Flash is now an opportunity
Flash chips are divided into two categories: NAND Flash and NOR Flash. NAND Flash chip technology is characterized by non-random storage, non-executable code, storage operations in blocks, high write and erase speed, with longer life, suitable for large-capacity data storage.
When the capacity reaches more than 1Gb, the cost per unit capacity of NAND Flash is much lower than that of NOR Flash, and it is widely used in large-capacity fields such as servers, mobile phones, PCs, and solid-state drives. Compared with traditional storage media such as mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs), storage devices such as SD cards and solid-state drives (SSDs) using NAND Flash chips have no mechanical structure, and also have the advantages of no noise, long life, and wide operating temperature range.
According to the different storage principles, such as the number of data bits that can be stored in each storage unit, Flash is further divided into four categories: single-layer unit (SLC), multi-layer unit (MLC), three-layer unit (TLC), and even four-layer unit (QLC), which can be divided into two categories: 2D and 3D from the structure.
At present, large-capacity data storage usually uses MLC NAND or TLC 3D NAND Flash, such as smartphones, large-capacity USB drives, solid-state drives and other fields; in high-reliability, high-speed, low-capacity applications, SLC NAND or SLC NOR Flash products can complete the corresponding work, such as the Internet of Things, industrial control, wearable devices, network communications and PCs.
At present, the main process of 3D NAND in major original factories is in the 96th floor and 128th floor, and it is expected that the 176-layer 3D NAND this year will become the main theme of market competition.
2. Market Overview
Nand Flash has become a major choice for mass storage due to its capacity and cost advantages. Occupies the main market share of the current memory chip. The data shows that the NAND Flash market is about 41% (about $63.6 billion) of the entire storage market.
The global NAND Flash market is mainly monopolized by overseas companies. In recent years, the six enterprises of Samsung Electronics, Jiaoxia, Western Digital, Micron Technology, Intel and Hynix have been relatively constant. According to TrendForce, in Q4 2021, the combined share of the above six companies in the global NAND Flash market reached 96%.
Yangtze River Storage is the only large-scale mass production 14nm 3D NAND Flash manufacturer in mainland China, representing the technical height of mainland manufacturers in the field of NAND. At present, Yangtze River Storage has mass-produced 128-layer TLC and QLC 3D NAND chips, and Jiwei Consulting expects that the revenue of Yangtze River Storage will be 11 billion yuan in 2021.
Trendforce data shows that in 2021, the share of Yangtze River Storage's flash memory products in the world will be about 4%, and in 2022, it is expected to reach about 7%. By 2023, the share of The Yangtze River stored in the global memory chip market will account for more than 10%, becoming an important force in the memory chip market.
The investment and leading advantages of the world's leading NAND manufacturers are mainly concentrated in the direction of large-capacity 3D NAND products, and the application market is mainly in the storage of mobile terminals such as smart phones, solid-state drives, etc.
At present, the development of the NAND Flash market is mainly driven by the demand of mobile markets such as smartphones and tablets. 5G and AI applications, such as high-definition cameras, video and other better experiences will lead to more content storage, is expected to increase the GIgabyte capacity of mobile phone NAND Flash storage by 3 times between 2020 and 2025.
In addition, driven by the wave of digital transformation, the market recovery in the PC field and the trend of PCIe4.0 shift, the increase in demand for high-performance, large-capacity storage in the data center market (2018-2025, SSD growth rate is 3 times faster than that of mechanical hard disks), and the improvement of automotive electronics for storage capacity (2019-2024 global ADAS field NAND Flash storage consumption compound growth rate of 79.8%, Gartner), will significantly promote NAND The FLash market is growing.
3. SLC NAND Flash market
Different from the development trend of mass storage products pursuing unit storage density, SLC NAND has higher read and write speed, longer life and higher reliability, and is currently mainly used in related fields with high reliability and latency requirements, such as consumer wearable devices, industrial-grade 5G communication equipment, security monitoring, and automotive applications.
In the global NAND Flash market, SLC NAND occupies a 5% market share, nearly $3 billion a year. According to Gartner statistics, under the support of the original rigid demand and the influence of emerging application areas in the downstream, SLC NAND's global market share is expected to grow at a compound growth rate of 6% from 2019 to 2024.
The leading enterprises in the field of SLC NAND, Samsung Electronics and Armored Man, are IDM models, and their technical production lines are mature, and the advanced product process has reached 16nm (Samsung). The technical development trend of SLC NAND is mainly to improve the product process and improve the performance of the product. In terms of process nodes, the mature process level in the field of SLC NAND has reached 1xnm, and future products will further shrink the process, reduce costs and power consumption, improve data reading speed, and improve reliability.
Different from 3D NAND, in the field of small and medium-sized SLC NAND, the gap between mainstream process nodes at home and abroad is small, and the advantages of advanced technology of international large factories cannot be fully utilized, and SLC NAND is also the only way to enter MLC NAND, TLC NAND and even 3D NAND mass storage, so the SLC NAND field gathers many mainland manufacturers. The leading domestic process is 24nm, and it is also advancing towards the 1xnm process.
In the field of SLC NAND Flash, mainland enterprise products mainly focus on high reliability, and gradually enter the fields of industry and automobiles.
Gigabit Innovation currently has a mature SLC NAND process node of 38nm, and the 24nm process node has achieved mass production and become one of the main process nodes, and is currently advancing to the 19nm process node, and the products cover 1Gb-8Gb mainstream capacity.
Recently, GigaDevice announced that the national production of 38nmSPI NAND Flash - GD5F full series has passed the AEC-Q100 vehicle specification certification. Covering 1Gb-4Gb capacity, from design and development, manufacturing to packaging and testing, all aspects of the use of domestic supply chain, to a great extent to fill the gap of domestic large-capacity vehicle memory chips, fully into the field of automotive applications.
The 38nm/28nmSLC NAND of Dongxin has been mass-produced, 24nm has reached the level of mass production, and the 1xnm SLC NAND is under development. Mainly concentrated in macro base stations, micro base stations, optical cats, Wi-Fi6, monitoring, security and other markets.
Fudan Microelectric's 38/40nm SLC NAND has been stable and mass-produced, and the design and development of 2xnm process nodes has been started. Optical cats, WiFi6 routers, 4G LTE data cards, 4G feature phones, etc. are its important markets. In the list of the top 100, Jiwei Consulting expects Fudan Microelectronics' revenue to be 2.5 billion yuan in 2021.
Other mainland NAND Flash manufacturers include Core World, Bean Technology, Hongwang Semiconductor, etc. also have SLC NAND related products.
JW Insights believes that compared with the IDM model, mainland NAND Flash design enterprises have faster process update speed, low management costs, high service responsiveness, and more advantages in channel coverage and customer relations under the current trend of domestic substitution. At the same time, with the continuous growth of 5G communication and security monitoring and the rise and development of emerging fields such as automotive electronics, the small and medium-sized capacity storage market has a large room for growth in the future, and mainland enterprises will benefit from it.
Fourth, NOR Flash's diversified competitive landscape is prominent
Electronic products due to internal instruction execution, system data exchange and other functional needs, must be configured with small and medium capacity of code memory, used to achieve functional requirements in a small amount of energy consumption, NOR Flash because of the random storage, fast reading speed, in-chip execution (XIP) and other characteristics, in the low and medium capacity applications with performance and cost advantages, become an indispensable important component in electronic products, but also in addition to DRAM and NAND Flash outside the market largest memory chip.
The advantages of NAND Flash are high density, large capacity, low cost, and faster erase and write speed, but because the peripheral circuit of NAND Flash is more complex and the area is larger, NAND Flash has obvious cost advantages over NOR Flash in data storage scenarios above 1Gb. Due to the simplicity of the peripheral circuitry, NOR Flash is cost-effective in capacities below 512Mb.
Floating Gate (also known as ETOX process), is the mainstream process of NOR Flash, with good high and low temperature stability and reliability and other characteristics, storage capacity can be expanded from 1Mb to more than 1Gb.
NOR Flash another process for SONOS, the industry only a few companies such as Puran shares to use, and mainly used for small and medium-sized capacity products, SONOS process structure is relatively simple, the cost is very advantageous, the unique tunneling principle can make the product have more low power consumption, overall below 128M has obvious advantages, SONOS process products account for less share in the entire NOR Flash market.
65nmETOX is currently the mainstream process of NOR Flash products. With the continuous improvement of downstream application requirements for NOR Flash products, the process process of high-capacity NOR Flash is advancing towards 50nm and below. The small-capacity NOR Flash stays at 65nm or more backward processes. Some leading NOR Flash manufacturers are developing a 4xnm node process, but it will take some time before mass production.
In the 10 years since 2006 (NOR Flash's global size is $7 billion), nor Flash's market space has decreased year by year as the number of feature phones has decreased. In recent years, with the rapid growth of downstream emerging applications such as smart phones, wearable devices (TWS headsets, smart bracelets/watches), Internet of Things, 5G, security and new energy vehicles (intelligent driving), the reading speed and complex functions of memory chips have gradually become the main driving force for the growth of the NOR Flash market, and the NOR Flash market has regained its momentum.
According to CINNO's forecast, the global NOR Flash market will reach $3.72 billion in 2022, which will maintain an annual growth of about 10%.
The industry usually identifies NOR Flash below 32Mb as a small capacity, which can achieve simple code execution functions, and has a wide range of applications in the fields of PC motherboards, set-top boxes, routers, Bluetooth headsets, AMOLED, TDDI, wearable devices and security monitoring products; 32Mb-128Mb is regarded as medium capacity, which can achieve more complex program execution functions, and regards more than 128Mb as large capacity, emphasizing the characteristics of functional complexity and fast start and reliability. Mainly used in 5G base stations, automotive electronics and other industrial and automotive electronics, the above market uses large-capacity NOR Flash, the main reason is that only NOR products with high operating frequency and fast data transmission rate can meet the needs of automotive, industrial and other fast start-up and reliability.
3. Subdivision field
JW Insights believes that the changing trend of capacity demand in emerging application areas will be the main driving force for the growth of NOR Flash scale, mainly including:
1) TWS headset (true wireless Bluetooth headset): As many manufacturers add over-the-air download (OTA), noise reduction and other functions, the capacity of NOR Flash has increased from the original 8Mb, 16Mb to 64Mb, 128Mb (the upcoming airpods new generation products will use 256Mb), and it is expected that the TWS NOR market space CAGR will reach 41.4% in 2020-2023.
2) IoT: With the continuous introduction of new features such as biometrics and health detection in smart watches/bracelets, more requirements will be put forward for the capacity and performance of NOR Flash, which will further promote the steady increase in demand for NOR Flash. The IoT NOR market will grow at a CAGR of 10.2% from 2020 to 2025.
3) AMOLED driver IC plug-in NOR Flash (2Mb-16Mb) is used for current and brightness compensation; TDDI plug-in NOR Flash is used to store the coded data required for touch function, and the total contribution to the nor Flash market is about 1.37 billion yuan.
4) 5G base stations (AAU, BBU), equipped with 6-10 512M-2Gb NOR Flash, with the further expansion of global 5G network construction (the construction volume of 5G base stations in the three major operators in the mainland is about 2.75 million in the next three years), the demand for large-capacity NOR Flash at the base station side will also show explosive growth, and it is expected that the total size of NOR Flash in the 5G base station market in 2019-2021 will be 500, 2550 and 58.5 million US dollars, respectively.
5) Automotive Electronics. In automotive electronics, NOR Flash (128Mb-2Gb) is mainly used in electronic devices that require high starting speed, such as display systems including automotive instrument panels, ADAS systems (advanced driver assistance systems), and it is expected that the market space of NOR Flash in the automotive field can reach 800-1.2 billion US dollars.
AT present, the global NOR Flash market is mainly dominated by five manufacturers, namely Winbond, Wanghong, Gigabyte Innovation, Cypress and Micron, with a total of about three-quarters of the market share.
At the same time, the market share of other small and medium-sized manufacturers in the industry has increased year by year, from 8.2% in 2018 to 21.6% in 2020, and the main driving force comes from the mainland.
Samsung completely withdrew from the market NOR Flash in 2010, concentrating production lines on NAND Flash and DRAM, Micron and Cypress began to reduce the production capacity of low-end NOR Flash memory products in 2016 and 2017, respectively, cultivating high-capacity NOR Flash with higher gross margins, or switching to DRAM and NAND Flash business, Wanghong and Winbond actually reduced production by 5%-10%, which gave mainland enterprises more room for development.
At present, including Puran shares, Dongxin shares, Juchen Semiconductor, Hengshuo Semiconductor, Zhuhai Boya, Core Tianxia, Fudan Microelectronics, Doujing Technology, Zhongtian Hongyu, etc. have become many fields in China, and the NOR Flash industry has begun to show a trend of diversified competition pattern.
JW Insights believes that at present, most domestic manufacturers have grown up, and the main application areas are wearable devices, mobile terminals and other fields, but in the fields of automotive electronics, industry and other fields, competitive NOR Flash products have not yet been formed, and the performance indicators such as the working temperature range of the main products are different from the mainstream level of foreign countries. From the perspective of product system, Taiwan enterprises Winbond, Wanghong NOR Flash has covered a complete product line of 512Kb-2Gb, mainland enterprises in addition to Gigabit Innovation, mostly stay in 512Kb-128Mb and other small and medium-sized capacity areas, the large-capacity NOR Flash coverage is insufficient, in automotive electronics, industry and other fields have not yet formed a competitive NOR Flash products.
5. Mainland enterprises
GigaDevice innovation is the absolute leader in the field of NOR Flash in the mainland, and as the world's first Formula Flash supplier, the first domestic and the top three in the world has a solid market position.
At present, GigaDevice innovation has realized the mass production of 55nm advanced process node SPI NOR Flash, and increased the proportion of large-capacity products. At the same time, Gigabit Innovation Vehicle Specification Grade SPI NOR Flash products have been fully paved; GD55 2G large-capacity products have passed the AECQ-100 certification, and GD25 Vehicle Specification Storage Full range of products have been used in batches in many automotive companies, which is currently the only nationally produced vehicle specification flash memory product.
Puran's small and medium-sized capacity NOR Flash products adopt 55nm and 40nm processes, covering capacities from 512K-128Mb, mainly more than 32Mb. In 2021, Puran co., Ltd. completed the development of a full range of 40nm 4M-128M products, and produced all the goods in Q3, and continued to switch to the 40nm process this year, being the first company in China to realize the 40nm process of NOR Flash products. In the list of the top 100, according to the financial report data released by Puran Shares, the revenue in 2021 is 1.103 billion yuan.
Hengshuo Semiconductor plans to achieve a breakthrough in the 50nm and 40xnm processes this year, with a capacity covering 256Mb to 1Gb, with high reliability and high stability of NOR Flash memory chips.
At present, 48nmNOR Flash has reached the level of mass production, the main capacity covers 2Mb-256Mb, and 512Mb-1Gb products will be launched this year.
Juchen expects to achieve mass production of NOR Flash products of 64Mb and below in Q3 2021, with more reliable performance and stronger temperature adaptability, and reach the industry-leading level in key performance indicators such as power consumption, data transmission speed, ESD and LU. In the top 100 list, according to the financial report data released by Juchen Shares, the revenue in 2021 is about 545 million yuan.
Fudan Microelectronics currently realizes the mass production of 128Mb~8Mb series wide voltage NOR Flash products on the ETOX NOR Flash 55nm platform, and continues to invest in the ETOX NOR Flash 50/40nm process platform and product development. In the top 100 list, according to the data released by Fudan Microelectronics, the revenue in 2021 is 2.576 billion yuan.
JW Insights believes that as a key link in the development of autonomous driving, ADAS has high requirements for the response speed and data integrity of its chips, and NOR Flash has advantages that other chips do not have in these aspects.
Therefore, at present, mainland manufacturers are accelerating the penetration of the automotive field, and after Gigabit Innovation takes the lead in advancing into the vehicle regulation market, Dongxin shares, Puran shares, Juchen shares, etc. also plan to gradually evolve from industrial standards to vehicle specifications. Nor Flash's share in industry and automobiles will continue to grow, but the consumer sector will have more demand and it will take years to reach a high proportion. The medium and large capacity NOR Flash market has the characteristics of strong customer stickiness and high gross profit margin, which is conducive to the long-term sustainable development and brand accumulation of enterprises. Cutting into the industrial market such as automotive electronics and 5G base stations and the large-capacity Internet of Things equipment market, it can provide business development space.
Fifth, EEPROM competes for the car specification market
EEPROM (erasable programmable read-only memory) is a general-purpose non-volatile memory chip, in the case of power failure can still retain the stored data information, can be erased on the computer or special equipment has the existing information reprogramming, can be rewritten online, can be erased and written at least 1 million times, data retention time of more than 100 years, the capacity is between 1Kb ~ 1Mb.
In practical applications, EEPROM is mainly used as an auxiliary chip for the control chip in the module to solve the data storage requirements of the module chip, such as the correction parameters of the lens and image stored in the smart phone camera module, the storage parameters and configuration files in the LIQUID crystal panel, the storage control parameters in the Bluetooth module, and the storage temperature parameters in the memory module temperature sensor.
Compared with NOR Flash, EEPROM has a smaller capacity, high number of erasures, low power consumption, suitable for all kinds of electronic equipment small capacity data storage and repeated scrubbing needs, widely used in smart phone cameras, LCD panels, Bluetooth modules, communications, computers and peripherals, medical instruments, white goods, automotive electronics, industrial control and other fields.
EEPROM memory products are mainly divided into consumer, industrial and automotive grades, and the performance differences of different levels of EEPROM products are reflected in temperature adaptability and reliability. Due to its unique chip structure, EEPROM has the advantages of high reliability, long service life and high cost performance, and has long met the stable data storage needs of consumer electronics, industrial control, home appliances, communications and other fields.
Among them, the consumer grade EEPROM requires -40 °C -85 °C temperature adaptability, 1 million reads and write times; industrial grade EEPROM requires -40 °C -105 °C temperature adaptability, 4 million reads and write times; automotive grade EEPROM is divided into: A3 (-40 °C -85 °C), A2 grade (-40 °C -105 °C), A1 grade (-40 °C -125 °C), A0 grade (-40 °C -150 °C) according to different temperature adaptation capabilities.
The EEPROM memory chip as a whole shows the characteristics of rising memory capacity and reliability, and the specific performance in the process and performance is as follows: In terms of process, the mainstream process of EEPROM products has developed to 130nm, and it is expected to continue to advance to 95nm and below in the future.
The size of the EEPROM memory market has been developing steadily before 2016. In recent years, the upgrading of smartphone camera modules and the development of IoT have led to a sudden increase in the size of the EEPROM market. 2016-2017 was an inflection point in the changes in the EEPROM market, driven by the main growth in the field of mobile phone cameras and automotive electronics.
According to CCID Consulting data, in 2020, the global EEPROM memory chip market size is about 800 million US dollars, and it is expected to be close to 850 million US dollars in 2021, and the global EEPROM market size will reach 905 million US dollars in 2023.
In terms of market, smartphone camera module applications have become the largest single application market for EEPROM. The total number of smartphone cameras in the world will reach 5.9 billion in 2021. According to CCID Consulting data, from 2018 to 2023, the global demand for EEPROM for smartphone cameras will increase from 21.63 to 5.525 billion. In the future, with the gradual upgrading of camera modules, the market share of high-capacity EEPROM will continue to increase.
In addition, industrial control fields such as smart meters (smart meters, water meters, gas meters in 2023 the overall market size is expected to exceed 40 billion yuan), automotive electronics (the average demand for EEPROM on each vehicle is more than 16, and the demand for automotive electronic EEPROM memory chips will reach 2.165 billion in 2021), which will provide a lot of market space for EEPROM.
3. Competitive landscape
From the perspective of market structure, EEPROM's market segments are divided into automotive, industrial and consumer electronics.
The major players in the global EEPROM market include STMicroelectronics, Microchip Technology, ON Semiconductor, ABLIC, Inc., Juchen, Fudan Microelectronics, ROHM Semiconductor, etc., the above manufacturers are mainly from Europe, the United States, Japan and Chinese mainland.
ST's top 10 EEPROM players, such as STMicroelectronics and ON Semiconductor, account for more than 95% of the global EEPROM market share. Among them, foreign companies such as STMicroelectronics, ON Semiconductor, and Microchip Technology focus on the automotive and industrial fields, while mainland companies such as Juchen Co., Ltd. and Fudan Microelectronics focus on consumer electronics, instrumentation and other fields. At present, the EEPROM process of overseas leading enterprises is at 110nm, and mainland enterprises generally stay at 130nm.
4. Mainland enterprises
Juchen Co., Ltd. is a leading enterprise of EEPROM enterprises in mainland China, the first mobile phone EEPROM in the world, the first in mainland EEPROM, and the third in global EEPROM. On the basis of consolidating the status of mobile phone camera modules, Juchen shares are also carrying out related layouts in the fields of home appliances, "three tables", and automobiles.
At present, Juchen's industrial-grade EEPROM products have reached the level of international competitors in terms of reliability (including the number of erasures, storage time), working voltage, power consumption and other key performance indicators, while improving the technology accumulation and product layout of automotive-grade EEPROM in A1 level and A0 level, from the car camera, liquid crystal display, entertainment system and other peripheral components gradually extended to the BMS battery management system, intelligent cockpit, MDC and other core components.
Juchen Co., Ltd. is one of the few enterprises in the industry that has both industrial-grade EEPROM products and automotive-grade EEPROM product development and design capabilities.
Fudan Microelectronics has realized the mass production of 130nm process platform, the market share of small-capacity EEPROM products in the field of computer monitors has reached more than 30%, the market share of large-capacity EEPROM in the field of smart meters is more than 50%, and the share of medium-capacity EEPROM in the field of global smartphone cameras is about 4%.
Shanghai Belling's EEPROM product series has been basically complete, to achieve a capacity of 2kb-2Mb, full coverage of various packaging forms, product customers focus on industrial control, smart meters, mobile terminals and other fields.
Puran EEPROM products cover 2Kb to 2Mb capacity, mainly using 130nm process, 95nm and below research and development is progressing smoothly. Pron Co., Ltd. plans to develop A3 and A2 grades of automotive EEPROM products. In 2020, Puran ranked 6th in the world in the market share of NOR/EEPROM, and the revenue growth rate was the fastest in the NOR/EEPROM global TOP10.
In the field of automotive electronics, due to the concentration of core automakers in Europe, the United States and Japan in the past, so that domestic memory manufacturers into the automotive electronics market barriers are higher. In recent years, with the rise of domestic automakers, in the body control system, instrumentation, BMS battery management and other types of automotive electronic products, domestic EEPROM products have been more and more common use, the corresponding market share is also increasing.
JW Insights believes that in the field of automotive-grade EEPROM competition, at present, overseas competitors have formed a relatively mature automotive-grade EEPROM product series, the technical level and customer resource advantages are relatively obvious, there are no mature, serialized automotive-grade EEPROM product suppliers in China, and it will take time for automotive-grade products to be recognized by mainstream customers. However, with the acceleration of domestic substitution, the import cycle of mainland EEPROM into the vehicle regulation market is shortening, the process of domestic substitution promotion is accelerating, the shortage of goods leads to the simplification of the import process, customers are more willing to give domestic manufacturers the opportunity, with the increase of corporate brand influence to actively seek cooperation, the space of mainland enterprises in the EEPROM vehicle market will further increase.