The country increases investment in chip research and development to increase the localization rate of optical devices

2018-03-12 14:05:00        0

As the core and key of optoelectronic technology, with the rapid development of optoelectronics industry, optoelectronic devices have seen their market scale increase year by year. The next five years will be a critical period for achieving the development goals of "Made in China 2025" and a period of strategic opportunities for the accelerated development of the optoelectronic device industry. To this end, the Electronic Information Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology guided the China Electronic Components Industry Association and organized key domestic optoelectronic device companies, research institutions, universities, and industry experts to jointly compile the "China Optoelectronic Device Industry Technology Development Roadmap (2018-2022) "Analyze the development status of the optoelectronic device industry, study and judge the key points and difficulties of the industry's development, and formulate the development goals for the optoelectronic device industry in the next five years.

  First, the status quo of the industry

  According to the data of Ovum, a consulting agency, the global optical communication device market has shown an overall growth trend from 2015 to 2021. It is estimated that the revenue scale in 2020 will reach 16.6 billion US dollars. Among them, the telecommunication market and the data communication market have maintained steady growth in the demand for optical communication devices, while the demand for the access network market has stabilized. Compared with the equipment and optical fiber and cable markets, the field of optical communication devices is still in the era of full competition. As many optical communication device companies are intensively working in a certain segment, this has resulted in a market structure with numerous manufacturers and low concentration, and market share. Also relatively scattered.

  From the perspective of product technology, the world’s major optical device manufacturers are actively deploying active optical chips, devices and optical module products, and have reached the level of 100Gb/s and above. Domestic companies have a relatively high market share in the low-end market segments such as passive devices and low-speed optical transceiver modules, but there is still a lot of room for improvement in high-end active devices and optical modules. In addition, the expansion of the data center market has become a common choice for many optical component manufacturers.

  From the perspective of profitability, the optical communication device industry itself has the lowest profitability in the entire industry chain. In addition, domestic enterprises are concentrated in low-end products, and the profitability level is not optimistic. This makes it difficult for most domestic manufacturers to invest more funds in technological research and development of high-end products, and it is difficult to achieve healthy and sustainable development.

  From the analysis of market share, the strength of Chinese companies is weak, and there is only one Chinese company among the top ten companies in the global optical communication device market share.

  From product technical analysis, the current global optical communications industry's high-end device products are almost all dominated by American and Japanese manufacturers, and there is a situation in which demand exceeds supply. However, the domestic market is basically blank or in the research and development stage.

From the analysis of core chip capabilities, domestic companies currently only master lasers, detectors, modulator chips at 10Gb/s and below, as well as the manufacturing process of PLC/AWG chips, and the design, packaging and testing capabilities of supporting ICs. The overall level is comparable to that of international Benchmarking companies still have a big gap, especially the high-end chip capabilities are one to two generations behind the developed countries in the US and Japan. Moreover, my country's optoelectronic chip tape-out processing relies heavily on the United States, Singapore, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries and my country's Taiwan region, causing a large loss of key technologies. Due to the lack of a complete and stable optoelectronic chip, device processing technology platform and process talent team, it is still difficult to form a complete standardized optical communication device R&D system in China, resulting in a long chip R&D cycle and low efficiency.

  Second, development ideas and goals

  1. Development ideas

  (1) Improve the living environment of enterprises and create a benign industrial ecology.

  (2) Research high-end chips/devices to ensure the security of the supply chain.

  (3) Strengthen the international market and promote the international development of the industry. It is necessary to take advantage of the national "One Belt One Road" initiative to actively cultivate the optical communications markets in Asia and Africa, prompt them to increase investment in network construction, and realize international production through foreign construction of factories, and international research and development through foreign construction and research centers.

  2. Structural adjustment goals

  (1) Products from low-end to high-end-market-oriented, optimize product structure. my country’s optical communication device companies should focus on strengthening R&D investment and market breakthroughs in 100Gb/s optical transceiver modules, ROADM products, high-end optical fiber connectors, 10Gb/s and 25Gb/s lasers, and supporting integrated circuit chips. Increase investment and progress in R&D in the fields of transceiver module products and silicon-optical integration, and strive to keep pace with the world's first-class manufacturers.

  (2) Technology moves from assembly to core chips-to fill up the shortcomings in the upstream and consolidate the industrial foundation. The core technology of the optical transceiver module lies in the optoelectronic chip. Must establish its own optoelectronic chip R&D and manufacturing capabilities, including laser chips, photodetector chips, integrated circuit chips, and photonic integrated chips. Ensure that in 2022 the localization rate of low-end optoelectronic chips exceeds 60%, and the localization rate of high-end optoelectronic chips exceeds 20%.

  (3) Cultivate leading companies and emerging small and medium-sized enterprises ---strengthening weak link industry groups. Cultivate leading and leading enterprises, and drive the industry to become bigger and stronger in core technology development, standard formulation and other aspects.

  (4) Promote the interconnection of upstream and downstream industrial chains-standardize the industrial environment and build an industrial ecology. On the one hand, promote domestic system equipment manufacturers to prefer domestic optical components to give full play to the leading role of the domestic market and high-quality equipment vendors; on the other hand, the upstream and downstream of the industry chain can jointly carry out technology research and development, establish test platforms, and jointly cultivate application ecology and participate Formulate international standards to jointly enhance leading capabilities.

  3. Technical innovation goals

  (1) Build a platform for industrial technology collaboration and innovation, and build a long-term innovation development mechanism. Accelerate the construction of a national manufacturing innovation center for information and optoelectronics, give full play to the leading role of industry backbone enterprises, effectively integrate various domestic and foreign innovation resources, and promote the transformation and upgrading of related industries.

  (2) Strengthen the design, manufacturing process platform construction and process personnel training of core active lasers, silicon-based optoelectronic chips and upstream key materials. It is necessary to speed up making up for shortcomings by building a common technology research and development platform, increasing the reserve of talents, and introducing overseas high-end talents.

  (3) Break through integrated packaging and testing processes such as high-density and high-speed, and realize the industrialization of high-end products. With dominant enterprises as the main body, launch 100Gb/s and 200Gb/s coherent optical transceiver modules and ROADM products for optical transmission networks as soon as possible, 200Gb/s and 400Gb/s optical transceiver modules for data centers, and working temperature for 5G mobile communications 25Gb/s optical transceiver modules, etc., and formed large-scale mass production to support the implementation of major national projects.

  (4) Improve technical standards and the construction of intellectual property systems. Establish a complete optical communication system and optical communication device standard system, encourage scientific research institutes and enterprises to actively participate in the submission of drafts of international and domestic technical standards, deeply participate in international standardization work, strengthen the construction of group standards of industry associations, and promote the transformation of independent intellectual property rights It is an international standard. Strengthen patent applications for optical communication devices, ensure that the gap between the number of patent applications and the United States and Japan is narrowed, improve the quality of patents, establish a domestic patent pool, and form a joint force in international competition.