From June 28th to 29th, the 8th Jiwei Semiconductor Conference 2024 with the theme of "Crossing Boundaries and New Quality Future" will be held in Xiamen International Conference Center Hotel. On the first day of the conference, the general meeting of the Semiconductor Investment Alliance and the final of the 6th "Core Power" project selection (hereinafter referred to as "Core Power") were successfully held. On the morning of June 29, at the main forum of the Jiwei Semiconductor Conference, the award ceremony of the 6th "Core Power" Project Selection Competition in 2024 was grandly held, and it was also announced that this year's "Core Power" selection came to a successful conclusion.
The "Core Power" Competition is a project selection activity jointly created by China Semiconductor Investment Alliance and Aijiwei, aiming to build the best docking platform for entrepreneurs and investment institutions, tap the innovative forces of China's semiconductor industry, and promote the iterative upgrading of the whole industry. Since 2019, the "Core Power" competition has been successfully held for six times, and has become the most influential entrepreneurship competition and financing platform in the domestic semiconductor industry.
The stage of the preliminary round of the 6th "Core Power" Competition in 2024 is particularly hot, and since the recruitment was launched in June 2023, it has attracted the attention of many domestic innovation projects and investment institutions. In the preliminary stage, a total of 14 online roadshows were held in the 6th "Core Power" Competition, and offline roadshows were held in Shenzhen, Jiangyin, Suzhou, Quanzhou, Haimen, and Hefei. More than 140 companies in the whole industry chain, including IP, EDA, design, equipment, materials, etc., participated in 20 offline/online roadshows, and more than 100 top investment institutions participated in the selection.
After the final roadshow of "Core Power" on June 28, after the review by a jury composed of 48 top domestic investors and representatives of 300+ outstanding investment institutions, the organizing committee of the competition announced that 13 projects won the "Most Investment Value Award" certificate stamped by the judges themselves. The final list of winners is as follows:
Shanghai Weichong Semiconductor Equipment Co., Ltd
Zhongke Guangzhi (Chongqing) Technology Co., Ltd
Fujian Fudou New Materials Co., Ltd
Huajing Sensing Technology (Wuxi) Co., Ltd
Guangdong Weirong Electronic Technology Co., Ltd
Suzhou Xinshinuo Semiconductor Equipment Co., Ltd
Shenzhen Jieyang Microelectronics Co., Ltd
Shanghai Weijing Technology Co., Ltd
Hefei Xinyihua Intelligent Machinery Co., Ltd
Etman Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd
Zhixinke (Hefei) Chip Design Co., Ltd
Hefei Kunlun Xinxing Semiconductor Co., Ltd
Shanghai Gongding Semiconductor Co., Ltd
At the same time, 6 companies won the "Investment Institution Recommendation Award" selected by the investment institution jury, and the list of winners is as follows:
Fujian Fudou New Materials Co., Ltd
Guangdong Weirong Electronic Technology Co., Ltd
Shanghai Weichong Semiconductor Equipment Co., Ltd
Huajing Sensing Technology (Wuxi) Co., Ltd
Suzhou Xinshinuo Semiconductor Equipment Co., Ltd
Zhongke Guangzhi (Chongqing) Technology Co., Ltd
All-round display of China's "core" power
At the finals of this year's "Core Power", Lao Qi, Secretary General of the Semiconductor Investment Alliance, founder and chairman of Aijiwei, said in his speech that in the past six years, the "Core Power" Competition, as a blockbuster event held at the same time as the Jiwei Semiconductor Conference, has received widespread attention and recognition, and the Semiconductor Investment Alliance has also become the most active and wide-ranging investment alliance at present. Xu Lun, Vice President of Aijiwei, made a report on the investment and financing of China's semiconductors in the first half of 2024, and introduced the 6th "Core Power" Project Selection Competition.
The 13 projects that won this year's "Most Investment Value Award" include leaders in the field of domestic semiconductor equipment, as well as new forces in the field of chip design, and have shown their strong strength in technical barriers, competitive advantages and disadvantages, and business models for popular applications ranging from automotive to artificial intelligence (AI).
With the use of advanced processes and complex processes, the number of process links is increasing, and the development of the industry puts forward higher requirements for the level of process control, and the demand for measurement equipment and testing equipment in the manufacturing process has doubled. Shanghai Weichong Semiconductor Equipment Co., Ltd. was initiated by a leading returnee semiconductor technology team and co-founded with domestic senior scientists and engineers, and is committed to becoming the world's most advanced semiconductor testing equipment R&D and manufacturer. Based on cutting-edge and innovative wafer inspection technology, Micro Chong Semiconductor can realize non-contact, non-damage, online, fast, and internal inspection of wafers, accurately identify and locate wafer defects, bring great value to customers in all stages of R&D, ramp-up, and mass production, and also provide new impetus for the great innovation of the semiconductor front-end inspection industry.
"High reliability packaging" has a huge market of 100 billion yuan, involving multiple fields and processes, and the demand is surging in the "post-Moore era". The core team has more than 15 years of technology and industrialization experience in the field of high-power semiconductor laser packaging and testing, analysis and process, and the company's products from semiconductor laser packaging to lidar and silicon carbide chip packaging technology reserves are sufficient, and advanced equipment has been mass-produced into many customers such as head enterprises, universities, and scientific research institutes.
At present, with the rapid development of AI intelligent technology, the application fields of smart devices with the capabilities of perception, decision-making, and execution are becoming more and more extensive. At the same time, the application scenarios have also changed from single perception to global perception, and from perceptual intelligence to cognitive intelligence, and the number of application scenarios has also increased rapidly. Shanghai Weijing Technology Co., Ltd. focuses on the R&D and innovation of high-end intelligent perception SoC chips, and masters key technologies such as AI computing engine, ISP image processing, heterogeneous parallel computing architecture, low-power technology, and advanced technology. Weijing Technology insists on providing customers with competitive chips and solutions through innovation in the fields of image, AI, integrated circuits and other fields.
Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) technology is a key technology applied to the R&D and production of compound semiconductor materials. Ettman Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. is a comprehensive service provider that provides MBE complete systems, components and epitaxial solutions based on MBE technology. The company's equipment products range from scientific research to production-oriented MBE equipment, with sizes ranging from 2 inches to 12 inches, and it is one of the few manufacturers that can ship production-type MBE equipment, and its technical level ranks among the top three in the world; Etteman Semiconductor has realized the shipment of GaAs (gallium arsenide) and InP (indium phosphide) epitaxial wafer products using MBE technology, and is conducting research and development of GaN (gallium nitride) materials, which have advantages in material quality and reliability and performance compared with other epitaxial technologies.
The global and Chinese integrated circuits are in a period of rapid development, which will greatly drive the demand for electronic special gases and semiconductor precursors, and domestic substitution has broad prospects. Fujian Fudou New Materials Co., Ltd. is committed to the R&D and production of electronic special gases and semiconductor precursors, supplemented by industrial ordinary gases and functional mixed gas services. The main products include more than 30 kinds of electronic special gases and more than 10 kinds of semiconductor precursors, such as HBr (hydrogen bromide), BCl3 (boron trichloride), C2H2 (acetylene), etc., which are widely used in the manufacturing process of cleaning, etching and film formation in the fields of integrated circuits, display panels and photovoltaics.
The AMHS (Automated Material Handling System) in the semiconductor fab runs in an orderly manner on the ceiling and is an integral part of the wafer and wafer manufacturing process throughout the production process. Suzhou Xinshinuo Semiconductor Equipment Co., Ltd., as a supplier of semiconductor AMHS system and overall solutions in China, combines its fifth-generation crane products with advanced technical experience and software advantages at home and abroad, iteratively upgraded on the basis of existing technology, and through the use of real-time better operating system and the latest generation of motion process control optimization algorithm, it has made a leap forward in the performance of motion fluency, stability, loading time, low vibration and other performance compared with the previous generation products. The company said that it will build the largest AMHS equipment headquarters research and development base with leading technology at home and abroad, and is committed to realizing the localization of AMHS equipment and software in the semiconductor industry.
With the growing demand for computing power in various industries, traditional computing architectures provide surging power while also bringing dual challenges of energy consumption and environmental burden. Zhixinke (Hefei) Chip Design Co., Ltd. has been focusing on the development of in-memory computing (CIM) large computing power chips, constantly exploring and breaking through technical boundaries, improving computing efficiency, reducing the cost of use, and providing artificial intelligence independent and controllable computing power base for new quality productivity. Relying on profound technology accumulation and innovation capabilities, Zhixinke has successfully developed an ultra-low-power neural network processor chip based on precision lossless memory computing. The advent of this core technology further ensures the independent controllability of the technology and provides efficient and stable computing power support for various application scenarios.
At present, the domestic power semiconductor market is broad, but the localization rate of high-end power devices, especially IGBTs, is less than 35%, and there is a huge space for domestic substitution. Shanghai Gongding Semiconductor Co., Ltd. is one of the few manufacturers in China that has mastered the structural design and process co-optimization of high-end power devices and the ability to develop characteristic processes. In terms of process, the company cooperated with upstream wafer fabs to jointly develop the seventh-generation IGBT micro-trench process platform; In addition, it has in-depth cooperation with downstream head module packaging factories and electronic control factories to form a virtual IDM strategic alliance with the company as a link to build a dual guarantee for wafer supply and chip market. The company has efficiently developed and launched more than 20 IGBT chips, and delivered millions of IGBT chips to customers, and is about to enter the next stage of large-scale volume. The seventh-generation high-current IGBT chip developed by the team has passed the bench test and has been put on the road test.
Unaffected by network infrastructure coverage, UWB enables ubiquitous, fast, and accurate ranging and positioning indoors and outdoors, opening up new application scenarios for mobile phones, wearables, digital keys, tags, and more. Shenzhen Jieyang Microelectronics Co., Ltd. is a high-tech company that designs independent and innovative ranging positioning and wireless connection chips, and provides system solutions, with world-class technical advantages in wireless algorithms, basebands, protocols, RF transceivers and SoC design, and has a number of patents in ultra-wideband (UWB) technology, and develops and sells UWB series chips and chips, its GT1500 is the world's smallest and lowest power consumption UWB SoC chip, using wafer-level packaging, A compact single-chip solution with four receiver channels including RF, analog, and baseband functions, and tight coordination with the embedded MCU for control and protocol processing, all on a single chip.
MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical system) is an important technical branch of the sensor and even semiconductor industry, because of its extremely strict requirements for technology and process, so for a long time, the development of domestic sensors has been difficult in the face of the technical "moat" dug deep by international giants. Huajing Sensing Technology (Wuxi) Co., Ltd. is a high-tech enterprise with independent MEMS sensor core chip technology, focusing on the R&D, production and sales of MEMS sensor chips, modules and components, including MEMS silicon microphones, MEMS pressure sensors, SBAW filters, etc., covering new energy vehicles, mobile phones, consumer electronics and medical and other fields. At present, Huajing Sensing Technology has established silicon microphone and pressure sensor production lines in F2 and G7 of China Internet of Things International Innovation Park, and both products have achieved mass production and sales have begun to take shape.
In recent years, driven by the wave of intelligence, electrification and digitalization on the demand side, the overall demand for MLCCs (chip multilayer ceramic capacitors) has continued to rise, especially the demand for high capacitance. Guangdong Weirong Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. has developed a series of ultra-high-temperature and high-capacity automotive MLCCs with a capacity of up to 220μF and a temperature upper limit of 125 degrees (typical specifications such as: 1210 X7T 100μF 4V; 1210 X7T 220μF 2.5V), which can be applied to high-end ADAS systems with high computing power requirements, such as intelligent driving domain controllers, body domain controllers, etc. Micro-capacity automotive-grade MLCCs have achieved the development of 0201-1210 full-size and full-range products, and the independent automotive-grade product development system, special automotive-grade production equipment, and independent automotive-grade production workshop are all strict guarantees for the high reliability and high consistency of micro-capacitance automotive-grade products.
With the continuous upgrading of process nodes, the combination of fab process manufacturing process and AMHS system has become an indispensable and important plan for fab production and construction. As a domestic manufacturer that can provide semiconductor OHT, Stocker, NTB and other AMHS overall solutions for semiconductor customers Fab, Hefei Xinyihua Intelligent Machinery Co., Ltd. independently developed OHT travel speed up to 320m/min, vibration ≤ 0.5G, with self-developed path exploration algorithm, support non-stop update of the control system, and the transfer efficiency has reached the international advanced level, which can effectively help the semiconductor production line shorten the production cycle, improve the utilization rate, and improve the direct delivery ratio. The company has become one of the few semiconductor AMHS overall solution providers in China that can provide complete sets of software and hardware, customized products, and localized supply chains.
Diamond is known as the "ultimate semiconductor", and it is a single semiconductor like silicon, and its performance completely surpasses that of existing semiconductors, and it can overcome the bottlenecks of "insufficient breakdown field strength" and "self-heating effect". Diamond has unique advantages in electronic devices that are ultra-high voltage, ultra-high current, ultra-high power, highly efficient, resistant to radiation and ultra-high frequency operation and do not require cooling. Hefei Kunlun Xinxing Semiconductor Co., Ltd. uses diamond, the material with the highest thermal conductivity in the world, to make diamond substrate epitaxial wafers, replacing the silicon carbide substrate with the highest thermal conductivity in the semiconductor industry, which is used in the manufacture of semiconductor devices, and has important value in the field of satellite communications and national defense and military. The core technology of Kunlun Xinxing is to use the direct connection technology of substrate and epitaxy to make diamond substrate epitaxial wafers, and there have been phased results.
So far, the 6th "Core Power" project selection activity in 2024 has come to a successful conclusion! The annual "Core Power" competition not only provides opportunities for participating companies to promote their brands and connect with capital, but also serves as the starting point for many outstanding semiconductor companies. With this recognition and encouragement, we firmly believe that these companies will move towards a more brilliant future, and let us witness the rise of new innovation forces in China's semiconductor industry together.
(Proofreading/Zhang Jie)