Three years ago, on June 5, 2013, a former cia staff called snowden detonated the sensitive nerve of all over the world. According to his report, the British first disclosed the guardian U.S. intelligence agencies "barbaric" monitoring in the world. At that time, a number of countries heads of state or government agency representatives spoke, accused the us of this. The event itself has over the past three years, but related questions did not stop.

The global monitoring, key in the chip

One of the key question is: why is the United States can do to monitor, monitor the world? Because the information network technology fierce. From hardware to software, from electronics to the virtual network world, the core technology dominated by the United States. When the world everywhere in the United States or its information network company control products, services, the United States have the monitoring, surveillance opportunities around the world.

Why do you say that? The answer is that America's absolute leading chip (IC) technology. On the surface, myriad changes, a variety of products, equipment and application of information network, has become the indispensable important component in modern society. But their roots, everything in the form of data stored in the large and small chip. Can say, in the information society, the production and living order of the largely based on countless small volume is amazing chip of information capacity.

However, there is no perfect thing in the world, the chip is no exception. Any chip in theory is flawed, not only have a life, will be "sick", is also likely to have been attacked by natural some defect. More importantly, any chip defects or curse, its designers is very clear, inline called "back door". In other words, American companies can sell you a expensive high-end chip, but want to really want to make you, in theory there is a way. See here, you may already know, the information building of a country should never be based on relying on foreign build platform on the basis of the chip.

Low self-sufficiency, high-end imports

In general, has high, medium and low-end chips. Low-end chips use on home appliances such as washing machines, air conditioning; In the chip can be used in intelligent terminal, a little like bank card chip, the common core chip on the mobile phone and computer equipment, etc.; High-end chip, is mainly used in CPU, large network switches and other important equipment.

At present, the world's major chip design, production and supply enterprise concentrated in the United States, such as Intel and qualcomm. China's chip technology and production technology, as a whole cannot be compared with the United States. But to say Chinese chip production capacity is very poor, it is little. In fact, China on low-end chips production, can completely self-sufficient. This is the strong support of made in China.

But in high-end chip demand, we basically rely on imports. According to the state council development research center released the g20 countries innovation competitiveness beige book, China's key core technology high foreign dependence, chip imports by 80%.

Is willing to "throw money", to fight

So, where is the chip industry development difficult? In other words, since the chip so important and so widely, the development of why so far we still not satisfactory? This is because the chip industry belongs to typical high intelligence, high investment, high risk industry.

Start with high intelligence. Chip industry is a typical technology-intensive industries. Small chip from user requirements to the products, through the design, manufacture, testing, packaging, such as multiprogramming, every step is technology intensive. Historically, China's chip industry started relatively late, the core technology, the integrated circuit industry in the core technology, design, manufacturing process, the industrial scale, leading enterprises and so on has bigger gap compared with the advanced world level. In general, the chip design level of the our country and international basic quite, encapsulation technology level gap between 4 to 5 years, manufacturing gap in about three and a half years. Many experts think that the development of China's chip industry, fully prepared to have a "fight".

In the high investment and high risk coexist. Chip industry itself has high investment, long term development and long return cycle characteristics, ordinary chip manufacturing enterprise investment to reach tens of billions of dollars. Someone said, we Chinese money now, as long as the national investment, don't say tens of billions of yuan, even hundreds of billions of dollars is not a problem. This remark is not false, in other industries may be valid, but is ineffective in the chip industry. Because of the development of the chip industry to follow a rule called "Moore's law".

"Moore's law" by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. Its core idea is that when prices unchanged, an integrated circuit can accommodate the number of components, about every 18 to 24 months will be doubled, the performance will be doubled. "Moore's law" reveals the information technology advances rapidly. It in driving chip technology constantly updated at the same time, also forced the enterprises constantly additional investment, chip manufacturing towards a "point of no return" -- constantly update products, update technology, update equipment, and each update is a huge investment. This large, relatively long return cycle industry, makes the chip industry a high risk industry, the general social capital are reluctant to enter. This kind of high risk, and makes the characteristics of the chip industry produces large amounts Evergrande ", it is easy to form the natural monopoly, newcomers are extremely hard development.

Therefore, in addition to independent research and development, and gradually realize localization of high-end chips, we have no way. But rationally, the "core", will be prepared to fight, to respect the law of industry, scientific planning, be willing to part with or use "throw money", and should pay attention to solving key core technology, also have to go the way of marketization of consumer recognition. In addition, there is no shortcut.