"Little Rice" to Leverage the Big Future-Shandong Huake Committed to Building China (Jinan) Intelligent Sensing Valley

Jinan Daily, August 12, B1 Edition

On July 28, Jinan Daily published an article entitled "the first domestic temperature sensor chip is put into production", which reported that Shandong Huake Semiconductor Research Institute Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shandong Huake") located in Jinan high tech Zone produced "HK1020" temperature sensor chip with independent intellectual property rights, which attracted the attention of national media. Industry insiders pointed out that "if there is no high-end sensor, 'intelligent manufacturing' is impossible to talk about. Seeing that a company in Shandong has made a world-leading temperature and humidity sensor shows that Chinese enterprises have awakened and seen market opportunities, but the domestic attention to the sensor is far from enough."

The temperature sensor chip produced by Shandong Huake is only the size of a grain of rice.

What is the sensor? Why should we pay attention to it? Where is the difficulty of doing the sensor and how to do it? The reporter conducted an investigation and interview.

The intelligent machine is just a shell after leaving the sensor

When driving, the reversing radar will sense the surrounding things and remind them; facing the camera, the mobile phone can identify whether you are the owner; setting a temperature, the air conditioner at home will automatically adjust according to the surrounding environment; without touching the steering wheel, the driverless car can still shuttle freely on the road. To achieve these, are inseparable from the sensor.

"For intelligent machines, sensors are like human eyes, nose, ears and skin, which directly affect and determine the performance of the machine control system." Shandong Huake general manager Ge Jiannan said.

From a macro perspective, information technology, as the leading technology in the development direction of modern technology, mainly includes three major technologies: information collection, transmission and processing. Transmission is communication technology. my country's fifth-generation (5G) communication technology is at the forefront of the world; processing mainly depends on computer technology, and our country is not lagging behind in this respect; and information collection mainly depends on sensors, and our country as a whole is still relatively backward.

As the core of information technology, computer technology and communication technology are easy to be concerned, and China has caught up or taken the lead. Today, the Internet of Things connects the world and makes it intelligent, and the importance of sensor technology in the information technology window is highlighted. In popular words: "The sensor is not good enough, and no matter how advanced the transmission and processing technology is, it is useless."

Take the smartphone that is most used in our daily life as an example. It is equipped with dozens of sensors such as magnetic sensors, gravity sensors, temperature sensors, photosensitive sensors, acoustic wave sensors, and fingerprint recognition sensors. "Without the sensor, the smartphone is just a stupid shell." In the field of artificial intelligence, sensors are used more, with about 20000 sensors on large intelligent robots.

It is understood that the size of China's sensor market will exceed 200 billion billion yuan in 2019 and will continue to grow at a high speed. Due to the late start, the development of China's sensor industry is lagging behind, especially the high-end sensor products are almost all imported from abroad.''

"Foreign a card neck, we can only stare." Industry insiders pointed out.

High investment, less talent, long R & D cycle

Why have sensor products been imported from abroad for many years?

Ge Jiannan introduced that the current market price of sensor products is not high. For example, an ordinary sensor chip only costs a few dollars. However, if you really want to make a sensor, its early research and development costs are huge, so few people are involved in the country.

"The investment in early-stage research and development is high. Taking a 100-person research and development team as an example, the annual cost is 60 million yuan, plus the equipment with a price of 10 million yuan, which requires at least several billion or tens of billions of investment." Industry insiders pointed out.

More difficult than high investment in research and development costs is the difficulty of finding talent. Ge Jiannan said frankly that when the company was forming a talent team, it could not find a suitable talent in the province.

The long cycle of research and development is even more tricky. "If a company chooses to start with basic research and development, it is difficult to produce results without four years. But the ever-changing international market environment will not give you that much time!" Ge Jiannan said. Shandong Huako chose to cooperate with the Semiconductor Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to quickly realize the transformation of results.

In October 2019, with the help of the technical cooperation advantages of the Semiconductor Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the investment of Shandong High-speed Group, Shandong Huaco was restructured and established in Jinan High-tech Zone. The company's R & D team rapidly promotes the transformation of technological achievements, and now has invention patents such as detection, small signal amplification, analog-to-digital conversion, calibration algorithms, integrated circuit layout protection and software copyright.

At present, Shandong Huake's first temperature sensor chip "HK1020" has been put into mass production, the company has independent intellectual property rights, products can replace imports. The company has two new temperature sensor products to be launched, the first temperature and humidity sensor chip has been completed design, is expected to achieve mass production by the end of 2020.

Shandong Huake staff show 8-inch wafer products, containing tens of thousands of sensor chips

To catch up and surpass, policy support is needed to form a joint force.

In December 2017, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Three-Year Action Guide for the Smart Sensor Industry (20172019), which aims to complement the shortcomings of the key links in the design and manufacturing of the smart sensor industry, promote the upgrading of smart sensors to the middle and high end, and further improve the industry Chain, promote the development of smart sensor industry clusters.

In December 2019, Jiading District of Shanghai formulated relevant opinions to encourage the development of intelligent sensor industry, pointing out that Shanghai Intelligent Sensor Industrial Park focuses on the development of integrated circuit and Internet of things chip industry with intelligent sensor as the core; in February this year, Guangdong Province issued the opinions on accelerating the development of semiconductor and integrated circuit industry, and proposed to break through the design of high-end general-purpose chips such as storage chips and processors, Vigorously support the development and design of special chips such as radio frequency chips, sensor chips.

On August 4, the State Council issued a number of policies to promote the high-quality development of the integrated circuit industry and software industry in the new period, including fiscal and taxation policies, investment and financing policies, research and development policies and other nine parts. Among them, the fiscal and taxation policies have corresponding tax exemption policies for different links of the entire semiconductor industry chain, with a maximum of 10 years of tax exemption.

Countries and other provinces and cities are accelerating the smart sensor industry. What are the advantages of Shandong in these aspects? How to make efforts? The only way is to enhance the industrial advantages, make up the short board of industry and improve the industrial chain, enhance the ability of R & D and innovation, and strengthen the support of talent team.

Shandong issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Development of the Integrated Circuit Industry" in 2014, proposing to grasp the country's new round of important strategic opportunities to promote the development of the integrated circuit industry and accelerate the transformation and upgrading of the integrated circuit industry in the province.

The School of Microelectronics of Shandong University is one of the first batch of national demonstration microelectronics colleges, which bears the heavy burden of training chip research and development talents. In recent years, it has trained professionals who connect the upstream and downstream of the chip industry chain.

On July 9 this year, the "Implementation Opinions of Jinan City on Accelerating the Construction of a Strong Industrial City" proposed to build an advanced manufacturing industry and a highland for the development of the digital economy. Specifically, it is necessary to focus on breaking through 17 key industries such as information technology innovation and integrated circuits to achieve large-scale, Clustering and high-end development.

Industry insiders pointed out that "supporting the localization of chips should be the support of the whole ecological chain such as technology, industry and policy, and give more support in venture capital, listing financing and tax incentives, so as to help domestic chip enterprises obtain the opportunity of continuous iteration and realize a virtuous circle, so as to make the core technology work."

At present, Shandong Huake is committed to building China (Jinan) Intelligent Sensing Valley and promoting the development of sensor chip industry chain clusters. The company-led high-precision digital intelligent sensor project is listed as a major project in Shandong Province in 2020. "This is a very important thing for Jinan, Shandong and the country. Huake is doing it, but it can't be done by our family alone." Ge Jiannan said that the industrial park planned and constructed by Shandong Huaco will be open to all kinds of sensor semiconductor industry chain enterprises, and strive to build a sensor demonstration ecological industry zone in the northern region. "Our goal is to replace imports, so that people stand up."

Reporter: Li Mengmeng Correspondent Wang Pengfei Editor: Mou Mingshan