Into the mainstream, the arrival of the domestic power supply IC turning point?

Opportunities are often given by mistakes and mistakes made by opponents, but we must be fully prepared. A Japanese earthquake in March this year and the consequent nuclear leakage and power cuts caused the production capacity of some semiconductor manufacturers in Japan and Europe and the United States to be greatly affected. Among them, power ICs are the most affected devices, which makes Chinese engineers and The purchasers will look for the second local source of supply as an important task, and it is very likely that these second sources will be the main source of supply after they have been fully verified. Although this time is not the fault of the opponents, but the opportunity has finally come. China's power IC manufacturers, are you ready?

On this topic, the journal interviewed BCD, a mainstream manufacturer of China's power ICs, Hangzhou Shilan, China Resources Xiaowei, Wuxi Xinpeng, Shenzhen Core Alliance, Submicroelectronics, Beijing Siwang, and Can Swiss Semiconductor, and found that these manufacturers are full of Confidence, and said that it has become a major source of supply on many power ICs.

"In fact, Chinese IC manufacturers already have low-power AC/DC and DC/DC power supplies, various linear regulators, reference voltages, various types of LED drivers, battery management, battery power monitoring, battery charging management, lithium ion protection, etc. The advantages of consumer electronics applications are mainly reflected in the lower price of Chinese IC manufacturers under the same performance indicators.” Jun Jun, Sales Director of C&L Semiconductor, stated, “We are more technically concerned with the pre-system design work and the optimization of the system. To solve the later cost-effective IC design. Our company and international power IC manufacturers PIN TO PIN products are L6562D, IR2520D, ZXLD1360 and so on."

The Wu Jing, senior director of BCD products, believes that in addition to price, the performance of domestically produced ICs is also surpassing their opponents. “Local manufacturers have gained greater advantages in linear regulators and reference voltages. Whether they are product prices or product performance In terms of reliability, for example, BCD's products in charger control chips, LED lighting driver chips, LED backlight control chips, etc. have strong competitiveness and are even better than international companies."

Regarding the advantages of Chinese manufacturers, Peiyan Shi, CEO of Beijing Siwang Electronic Technology Co., explained that in consumer electronics, local design companies have added more chip products for battery charging and related applications. One of the reasons is that China is the world’s consumer electronics. The main production bases, most of which are powered by lithium batteries, will naturally need more and more smart lithium battery charge and discharge management chips. So for these applications, local design companies invented and designed some new lithium battery intelligent management chips to meet these market demands. For example, a unique chip of Siwang is the SE9120. “We defined and designed the SE9120 from scratch in the lab. This is the only device in the world that can measure battery power and display battery power on LCDs and LEDs. The single-chip solution, which had just entered the market for six months, sold 10 million units.”

During the interview, everyone agreed that the current weaker product areas for Chinese manufacturers are integrated power solutions, integrated power management for power MOSFETs and application processors, hot-swap power management, digital power control solutions, and high-voltage power supplies. Application area. "It is mainly due to the backwardness of the domestic production process and system design experience that has caused backwardness in reliability and other indicators." Analysis of Sheng Jun.

For example, the power supply of mathematics, Fang Guoteng, deputy general manager of sales of China Resources Micro Markets, explained that digital power technology can provide specific results for high-power system energy saving, and the current number of unified power supply PMBus suppliers is also increasing, but domestic The IC manufacturers' concerns about this should be limited. He is not particularly recommended now. But he also believes that the huge potential of digital power is emerging: "Originally, the contribution of digital power control to power density is still in dispute, but the arrival of cloud computing drives the development of container servers, and the demand is very fierce. It controls the digital power supply. The demand for technology immediately established the irreplaceable position of digital power."

Another weaker area for Chinese manufacturers is integrated circuit modules. "Integrated power solutions should be weak for China's manufacturers, because this requires a large investment, and close cooperation with the main chip system, because the current domestic main chip system is still relatively weak, resulting in supporting companies can not fully devoted." Wuxi Xinpeng Microelectronics Co., Ltd. Li Zhihong.

However, Wu Jianxing, general manager of power supply and power drive product line of Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics Co., Ltd., believes Silan Microelectronics has made breakthroughs in the MOSFET and integrated power module markets. "China's discrete device manufacturers have made remarkable progress and have been able to mass-produce planar and trench gate power MOSFETs, which have occupied a considerable market share in low-end applications," he said. However, he also admits that “Europe, U.S., Japan, and other international brand manufacturers still occupy an absolute leading position in high-end products by virtue of their long-term technical accumulation, parametric performance, and quality of reputation.” He explained that high-voltage power MOSFETs deserve attention in recent years. One development trend is that the application of high-voltage MOSFETs with Super Junction structure is accelerating and popularization, and the technical indicators are continuously improving, and domestic manufacturers have not yet launched mass production products. "Silan Microelectronics has started the development of the Super Junction structure process," he revealed.

In addition to the above hot spots, Chinese manufacturers have also concentrated their efforts on research and achieved significant success, including the LED drive field. The following sections discuss several areas of AC/DC and DC/DC power supplies, LED drivers, and integrated power modules.

Chinese manufacturers get together AC/DC and DC/DC

"In recent years, ZTE, Huawei and a large number of domestic terminal system manufacturers have made great progress in the field of mobile phones and consumer electronics. Domestic IC manufacturers have also made a substantial share of the market in this area. In addition to domestic customers, domestic products have also been easily seen in the ODM/OEM cooperation vendors of international brands such as Samsung, LG, MOTO, and Nokia. For example, a single product from Huawei Ruwei is available. A month to a customer can reach 7-8 million, not to replace, but an exclusive supplier.” Obviously, as stated by Fang Guoteng, deputy general manager of sales of China Resources Micro Market, is a Chinese manufacturer on mobile phones and consumption. The rise of the electronics market has made AD/DC or DC/DC manufacturers in this market. Fang Guoteng believes that Chinese manufacturers not only seized the opportunity but also created new markets. For example, in the past, some low-order but large-volume RCC products are now being replaced by ICs due to stricter requirements for low-load power consumption, lower production labor costs, and integration to promote reliability optimization. It is already in one direction, which has caused certain specific markets to expand several times immediately.

Hangzhou Si Lanwei Wu Jianxing thinks: In the field of AC/DC applications, in the aspect of low power external power adapters below 65W, Chinese IC manufacturers have occupied a lot of market share with high quality and low price. In the area of ​​65W or more mid-high power applications or the internal power supply of the entire machine, the entire machine is not sensitive to IC cost, or it is mainly based on the plans of major international companies such as Europe, the United States, and Japan. If IC companies in China want to make further breakthroughs, they must first improve the technical performance indicators of the product itself. In addition, they must continue to improve their quality control capabilities and meet the stringent quality requirements of top customers. Silan Micro's current AC/DC products are mainly based on applications below 65W, and are divided into three blocks according to the output power and application areas: 5W-24W output power, mainly applied to DVD/DVB power boards, standby power supplies, and Portable product adapter; 3W-6W output power, primary control, mainly used in mobile phone charger; 0W-65W output power, this power segment is mainly used in notebook, printer adapter, LCD MONITOR and small size LCD TV, this year In the second half of the year, two products will be introduced to the market.

Corechip Microelectronics' products are mainly focused on AC/DC and DC/DC and plasma TV display drivers. “In the process of substitution, we mainly have the following characteristics: Quality and performance guarantee the safety of customers, the price keeps decreasing, guarantee the long-term benefits of customers, provide sufficient supply, and provide timely service to ensure the stable production of customers.” said Li Zhihong, the main foundry of the core manufacturer. Hua He Hua Hong, the process used has a voltage range of 5V-800V multiple voltage; line width from 0.35 microns to 1 micron multiple levels.

Zhu Zhihao, director of marketing at Huiman Microelectronics Co., Ltd., believes that AC/DC that meets international energy conservation standards is a new opportunity. Taking the AC/DC power supply chip as an example, some domestic excellent IC design companies have been able to design power supply control ICs that meet the latest international energy conservation standards such as 30mW standby power consumption, and start to occupy most of the domestic and foreign markets with their excellent price/performance ratio. Cell phone charger market. The company focuses on AC/DC integrated power supply solutions. The representative product is the FT831D, which is a primary side feedback control chip that can achieve output constant current/constant voltage function, in which the constant current accuracy is less than 5% and the constant voltage accuracy is less than 10 %, can easily meet the requirements of the Tell USB charger and meet the ENERGY STAR 2.0 requirements. The upgraded version of the FT835 achieves a standby loss of less than 30mW on this basis, which can meet the five-star standard of no-load loss established by the five major mobile phone manufacturers.

However, unlike AC/DC, in DC/DC, especially in the so-called industrial applications, or some people call the market of Broad Market, it is still an international brand factory such as Guoban, Maxim, Linear Technology, and Adorno. Wait for the current situation. It is difficult for Chinese manufacturers to operate in this market because, unlike the vertical market, these products are either dominated by foreign primary system designs, or the amount of each single case is too small to attract the interest of domestic start-up companies. And sometimes the products that traditional IDM factories adjust with their own in-house unique technology, their threshold is relatively high. “However, with regard to the development potential in this direction, the domestic market resources will provide much better opportunities for local manufacturers than Taiwanese manufacturers. Taiwanese manufacturers have focused on the PC market in the past, and most of them use selected targets for domestically booming industrial electronics. The redevelopment of the market takes the place of foreign products as a direction, and local manufacturers also have more advantages in close proximity to the market,” said Fang Guoteng.

Compared with AC/DC, LED lighting and large-size backlighting are emerging markets in recent years, and the technology is rapidly evolving. This allows Chinese local IC manufacturers to see opportunities for technological innovation. They express this area, we The difference between international companies is not too far.

“At present, the development of LED lighting technology at home and abroad is very fast, and the market competition is also very fierce. Overall, foreign manufacturers have a strong power management technology background and market background, LED lighting technology is at the leading level. However, LED lighting is a In the emerging fields of application, the gap between the time taken by Chinese IC manufacturers and European, American, and Japanese companies is not large, and everyone basically has similar starting points and opportunities. From the point of view of new products currently released, the performance indicators are comparable.” Wu Jianxing of Silan thinks . Compared to mature industries, customers are also more willing to use new brands in emerging areas (such as LED lighting), which will bring more market opportunities for new brands of products. "We have every reason to expect Chinese IC companies to perform well in LED lighting," he said with full confidence.

Silan Micro is one of the companies that entered the LED driver design earlier. The main application area is LED lighting. Now a complete LED lighting solution has been formed. According to the different power supply, the product is divided into two parts: DC/DC LED driver, mainly used in MR16, MR11, street light / panel light / fluorescent lamp in the two constant current; AC / DC LED driver, the main application areas are high-pressure injection Lights (E27/GU10), bulbs, PARs, fluorescents, panel lights, and street lights.

Fang Guoteng said that in terms of LED lighting, CR Power's PT4115 is almost a standard chip for MR16 applications in the industry, with millions of units shipped every month. The products are sold in more than 10 countries around the world, including the United States, Japan, and South Korea. France, Italy, Russia, Spain and other Asian regions, etc. "But also because of obvious goals and faced great follow-up from competitors at home and abroad, in order to avoid losing the country, the price quickly declined." Based on PT4115, Converse also Other chips have been developed, covering a wide variety of lamp types and sizes such as T5/T8 fluorescent lamps, PAR lamps, bulb lamps, corn lamps and street lamps, as well as isolation and non-isolation solutions.

He said that because of the relatively early investment, CR Huanwei has the advantage of “early bird”. Compared with foreign manufacturers, it should have advantages in terms of shipments, and from the accumulation and evolution of technology, Look, it is comparable, "We also continue to invest in enhancing product optimization to increase efficiency, high PFC, non-flicker thyristor dimming, system simplification such as input electrolytic capacitors, such as strengthening the integration to reduce the size The chip, and the resources of a large number of system engineers to provide EMI and radiation can be the solution." A year ago they began to provide solutions for foreign lighting manufacturers, and has also been used by the top few manufacturers. Local LED power ICs have entered the international market.

Hu Xiaobo, general manager of submicroelectronics, said that their innovation is highly integrated. "We integrated as many resistance and semiconductor devices in the power supply control device into the IC as possible to reduce the number of devices required in the IC periphery and reduce the cost of the power supply, especially when we design front-end feedback regulators and constant current ICs. It meets the cost reduction requirements of power supply end customers and advances the miniaturization of power supplies.Since the LED drive power source made with our IC is small, efficient and stable, in the field of LED lighting, Yacheng Power Management IC has been used in large quantities," he explained.

Unlike several of the above, Canray Semiconductor's innovation focuses on large and medium-sized LED backlight applications. Lu Chengchang, vice president of CanRay Semiconductor, said that the company's LED backlight driver IC series uses UMC high voltage and BCD technology, and the product OCP810* series is widely used in 5-inch to 10-inch TFT-LCD LCD backlighting; the OCP812* series will It is widely used in LED backlighting of TFT-LCD LCD screens up to 50 inches in size. Thanks to the company's proprietary technology, the company has developed a lead in the industry that will enable Zonda TFT-LCD LCD backlighting systems to provide efficiencies as high as 90%, and to provide customers with low-cost and high-performance products.

Lu Chengchang stated that the company will innovate in technology, such as the large-screen TFT-LCD LCD backlight backlight dimming technology, is to adjust the light for the backlight area of ​​the specific area of ​​the screen, or adjust the different The brightness of the backlight of the area makes the picture look darker or brighter, and the area dimming can save the number of used light sources and make the picture area look more realistic.

The attempt to integrate integrated power modules on integrated power modules is considered to be the current weakness of Chinese manufacturers because it requires a large investment, close cooperation with the main chip system, and has a high technical threshold. However, there are Silan and other manufacturers have been trying.

"Because the IPM module involves high-voltage integrated circuits, high-performance power device chips, and high-reliability packaging technology, it has been relatively slow to develop in China, and the current market is basically occupied by foreign brand manufacturers." Wu Jianxing said. IPM module (commonly known as smart power module) has a wide range of applications in various types of power conversion and power drive systems. In general, IPM module integrates multiple power device chips (such as IGBT, MOSFET, FRD, etc.) and high voltage drive. The circuit, etc., greatly simplifies the complexity of the assembly of the whole machine, reduces the assembly cost, reduces the size of the whole machine, and improves the reliability.

Wu Jianxing believes that due to the continuous and rapid growth in the application of IPM modules in variable frequency motor drives and integrated power supplies, many domestic companies have invested in the development of related technologies; based on the progress of chip technology and packaging technology, I believe IPM's market application will soon have a breakthrough.

Silan Microelectronics has invested in the multi-chip high-voltage power module manufacturing production line by leveraging the chip capabilities of planar high-voltage VDMOS, IGBT, fast recovery diodes and other power devices that have mastered the core technology, and the chip capability of high-voltage integrated circuits. The power module integrates the original dozens of discrete components into a single plastic package and integrates various types of protection that can react abnormally in real time. At the same time, it takes into account high insulation and high thermal conductivity, and is the most important device on the inverter motor controller. It has very obvious advantages in terms of reliability, effectiveness and volume. Silan Microelectronics has researched and developed several integrated power modules. For example, the SD04M50 power module integrates six 500V/4A low switching loss MOSFETs with ESD protection and three high- and low-side drive HVICs, mainly used in air conditioners below 150W. Indoor and outdoor fan frequency conversion drive and three-phase brushless DC fan drive. The SD20M60 power module integrates six 600V/20A IGBTs, six fast recovery diodes, three high voltage integrated circuits (HVICs), three bootstrap diodes, and one low voltage integrated circuit. It is mainly used for air conditioning compressors below 1500W. Variable frequency drives such as variable frequency drives and industrial sewing machines, spinning machines, etc.

“All Silan Microelectronics power modules are developed and manufactured by themselves. The power module parameters can be customized according to the customer's needs to meet the local market's just-increasing and ever-increasing requirements for brushless DC and variable-speed inverters.” Wu Jianxing Said, "Silan Microelectronics power module has been close to and partially catching up with similar products of international power supply manufacturers in terms of impact resistance, noise resistance and heat dissipation performance."

He said that the Japanese earthquake caused the continuous out-of-stock of power devices, and the power production capacity of international power supply giants was also greatly limited, resulting in serious shortage of power modules, but this also brought opportunities for local power modules. Silan Microelectronics' power modules focus on areas where conversion efficiency is currently low but the market needs to be developed, such as brushless, brushless, fixed-frequency shifting industrial and home appliances. Through the power module customization and control program coaching, favored by the user.

Some of the interviewed power IC manufacturers due date and affected by the earthquake in Japan Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics: In the past year and a half, due to the continuous growth in the applications of industrial electronics and consumer electronics, the demand for power semiconductors has increased substantially. All suppliers, including international manufacturers, have experienced insufficient production capacity and the market has been in short supply. Faced with the shortage of production capacity in the entire market, Silan Micro expands production capacity on the one hand while improving production management capabilities, continuously reducing the processing cycle for each process, maximizing the capacity of existing equipment; on the other hand, strengthening communication with customers. , According to the needs of customers arrange feeding, so as to ensure the optimization of production resources. At present, the delivery time of the IC is three months, and the MOSFET delivery time is two months, which is basically normal.

Wuxi Xinpeng Microelectronics: At present, we have not encountered production capacity problems, and the delivery time of customers within our system is controlled within two weeks.

Core Semiconductor: Our company recently encountered some shortages in the flowsheet and packaging. At present, our company mainly adopts the off-season multi-stocking program. At present, the delivery period of our company is about 60 days, and the delivery period of the package is about 45 days.

Huiman Microelectronics: We have not encountered any shortage of production capacity. Our general delivery time is four to six weeks.

Submicroelectronics: At present, Submicron is in a period of high-speed development. For the time being, it has not encountered any shortage of production capacity. In general, the delivery cycle is within 30 days. What is Submicron? The reasons are as follows: 1. Accurately estimate the market demand in the next three months, and make sufficient inventory in wafers; 2. Make reasonable and effective arrangements for the key links in the test/encapsulation/test/logistics and shorten the delivery. Time; 3, require agents to stock up in advance and support customers' urgent orders.

BCD: From the current point of view, we do not feel the impact of the Japanese earthquake on production capacity.

Beijing Siwang: We have not been affected. We have cooperated with several foundries for more than 5 years and have a very good cooperation relationship. We will give the demand forecast in advance and the foundry will reserve production capacity for us to guarantee delivery. In general, our chip delivery cycle is 6-8 weeks.