This year marks the convening of the 10th Songshan Lake China IC Innovation Summit Forum (hereinafter referred to as “Songshan Lake Forum”). From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on September 18, the Songshan Lake Forum was hosted at Hyatt Regency Dongguan Hotel as scheduled. Under the topic of “Innovative Domestic IC, Most Desirable Component for Developing New Infrastructure”, the forum had attracted more than 100 guests from the upper and lower reaches of the industry, R&D companies and investment institutions. They gathered together to explore the blueprint for the development of the industry.
The forum was attended by prominent leaders and guests, including Song Tao, Advisor of the People’s Government of Dongguan Municipality and President of Dongguan Songshan Lake IC Design Service Co., Ltd.; Zhu Woqiang, Member of the Party Working Committee and Member of the Management Committee of Songshan Lake Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone; Dai Weimin, Vice President of the IC Design Branch of China Semiconductor Industry Association, Founder, President and CEO of VeriSilicon; and Cheng Jinge, Secretariat of the IC Design Branch of China Semiconductor Industry Association.
Group photo at the Songshan Lake China IC Innovation Summit Forum
Over 90% of the IC launched in the past nine years had realized mass production.
At this year’s Songshan Lake Forum, over ten new IC products produced domestically were on display. Among them, one is the ultra-low quiescent power step-down DC/DC-CW6601 by Dongguan CellWise Microelectronics Co., Ltd.
According to statistics, the Songshan Lake Forum has been successfully convened for nine years from 2011 to 2019 and over 90% of the domestic IC launched by the forum had realized mass production. Specifically, totally 46 companies were promoted from 2011 to 2019. Following the promotion at the Songshan Lake Forum, 11 companies went public, two in the listing process, six companies under the investment of China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, and four companies being acquired.
Cheng Jinge expressed that currently still many uncharted fields in the IC industry are left to be developed by China. It is hoped that relevant meetings like Songshan Lake Forum will be able to boost development of the industry and products to fill the void in the market.
Song Tao expressed in his address that along with the transformation of upgrading of industry and constant improvement of the business environment in Dongguan, Dongguan has attracted settlement of headquarters of many enterprises: R&D headquarters of OPPO, Huawei Terminal Headquarters, new headquarters of vivo and the technology innovation headquarters of SF Express. Upgrading is accelerating from “Made in Dongguan” to “Intelligent Manufacturing in Dongguan”. The IC industry represents critical link in the upgrading of the electronic information industry and serves to relieve the pain of the local electronic enterprises for short of IC.
“New infrastructure” had been included in the 2019 Report on the Work of the Government. The semiconductor industry, at the upper reach of the industrial chain, will provide core technology support for the “new infrastructure”. Now is a perfect time for the development of the IC industry. Song Tao expressed that it is expected that the Songshan Lake Forum will be able to facilitate exchanges and cooperation between design enterprises and system vendors to enhance stability and competitiveness of the industrial chain.
In the first half of this year, China’s IC industry reaped a sales revenue of 353.9 billion yuan, realizing growth of 16.1% even under unfavorable conditions.
Song Tao also pointed out that “the development of the IC industry is faced with many challenges”. As a capital-intensive and technology-intensive industry, the IC industry still needs to address difficulties in such aspects as talents cultivation, equipment introduction, raw materials supply and patents development.
Asset of Songshan Lake: Converging resources to lead in the IC industry
Through development in the past ten years, Songshan Lake is now home to more than 30 enterprises dealing with IC design and has formed a relatively mature ecology of IC industry.
Zhu Woqiang expressed that Songshan Lake Science City constitutes an important part of China’s fourth comprehensive national science center. It provides sound conditions for the development of the IC industry with its ability to pool quality resources from Dongguan and Shenzhen.
It is learned that Songshan Lake has built the country’s first and the world’s fourth pulsed spallation neutron source. It also actively promoted the incorporation of Southern Advanced Photon Source into the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan and its settlement in the Songshan Lake Science City. In the future, centering around materials science, information science and other fields, efforts will also be made to advance the construction of the second phase of the spallation neutron source and install a batch of major scientific infrastructure facilities such as electron laser and Southern Advanced Photon Source, which can serve as the main engine driving the source of innovation, development of technology and upgrading in the IC industry.
In addition, the Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory is one of the four provincial laboratories initiated by the Guangdong Provincial Committee of CPC and the People’s Government of Guangdong Province. The team of the laboratory has now entered the City of University Innovation and the Pearl River Delta Branch of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Center for Interdisciplinary Sciences had already been unveiled.
Meanwhile, Songshan Lake also worked with key universities of the country such as Peking University and Tsinghua University in establishing 32 new type of R&D institutions, which can make constant contributions to improving innovation in the IC industry.
Moreover, equipped with a talent policy with international competitiveness, Songshan Lake has attracted 24 top academician-level scientists such as Chen Hesheng and Wang Enge to carry our scientific research. The Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory has successfully attracted 17 research teams including the team led by Huang Xuejie.
At present, Songshan Lake possesses 70% of the city’s provincial innovation and research teams, 61% city-level innovation and research teams, 87.8% of the city’s leading talents, and 59.4% of the city’s characteristic talents. The provincial leading talents of Dongguan all gather in the Songshan Lake and are able to provide diverse and sustainable high-end talents support for the development of the IC industry. At the same time, we are accelerating building an international innovation and entrepreneurship community, planning for 15-minute convenient life circle to offer a sound working and living environment for the talents.