Highlights: FPGA chip technology is rapidly catching up with the US! Will these eight companies become the hope for the entire country?

At the end of May, the Nikkei Asian Review quoted industry insiders revealing that Huawei has stockpiled two years’ worth of key US chips, especially hoping to stockpile imported FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) chips that are crucial for 5G base stations.

Dubbed the “universal chip”, FPGA made a significant impact at the start of 2020, not only as a core component of major life-saving ventilators but also as a key power source for popular new infrastructure projects such as 5G, AI, and big data centers.

According to market research firm MRFR, the global FPGA market was approximately $6.9 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach $12.5 billion by 2025.

On one hand, China’s 5G new infrastructure is booming, driving up demand for FPGA; on the other hand, the technological iron curtain erected by the US is forcing domestic FPGA players to grow rapidly.

Multiple factors of the times converge on the same track. In the tide of semiconductor self-replacement, “usable” is no longer sufficient to meet the market demand for FPGA. If domestic players do not want to be shackled by upstream foreign constraints, they must possess the ambition to compete with world-class competitors and the perseverance to tackle advanced technologies under pressure.

In this race to revitalize domestic FPGA, how far are we from international advanced levels? Among the eight major domestic FPGA players, who has the most hope of leading the charge?

Thirty-Five Years of Stormy Roads: Two American Giants Dominate the FPGA Landscape

In the 1980s, Ross Freeman had a radical idea: to make chips like a blank canvas, allowing engineers to add functions through reprogramming to adapt to changing standards and specifications.

Freeman was born in 1948 in Michigan, graduated with a degree in physics from Michigan State University at 21, and earned a master’s degree from the University of Illinois at 23. In his 30s, he served as the engineering director in the Components division at Zilog.

To those around him, Freeman’s innovative idea seemed somewhat strange.

At that time, transistors were as precious as gold, but Freeman’s idea required cramming a large number of expensive transistors onto a single chip, seemingly contradicting the mainstream chip ideology of the time.

One of his core team members, Bill Carter, who later became the eighth employee of Xilinx, recalled: “After he described the concept of FPGA, my first thought was, crazy! This is the most irresponsible waste of transistors in history.”

▲Ross Freeman

However, external doubts did not stifle Freeman’s innovative ideas in the cradle. Driven by his belief in Moore’s Law, he convinced his then-superior, Bernard Vonderschmitt, vice president and general manager of the microprocessor division at Zilog, to co-found a new company, Xilinx.

In 1985, Xilinx launched the world’s first FPGA product, the XC2064. At that time, this innovative programmable chip, with less than 1000 logic gates, did not receive much attention from the industry due to its unclear commercial prospects.

But as Freeman predicted, the cost of transistors steadily declined over time, making FPGA an economically flexible alternative to custom chips widely used.

Thus began the gradual rise of a new semiconductor empire, which, after 35 years of ups and downs, is now sprinting towards a billion-dollar market, with Xilinx dominating half of this market for many years.

From consumer electronics to industrial control, medical imaging, aerospace, communications, and automotive, FPGA demonstrates indispensable application value across various markets.

On September 26, 1989, the US announced a new patent application by Xilinx for “configurable circuits composed of configurable logic elements and interconnections”, marking a milestone in the development of FPGA. Unfortunately, less than a month after the patent was announced, the father of FPGA, Ross Freeman, passed away after suffering from a long-term illness.

A generation of semiconductor giants has departed, but the FPGA giant ship continues to sail forward at full speed.

Over the past 35 years, the FPGA market has undergone significant changes. According to public reports, more than 60 companies worldwide have invested billions of dollars to enter the FPGA field, including chip giants such as Intel, IBM, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, and Samsung, but most companies ultimately fell short.

Even a powerful player like Intel ultimately chose not to start from scratch but spent $16.7 billion in 2015 to acquire Altera, the then-second-largest FPGA manufacturer, successfully entering the FPGA market.

Acquisition of International FPGA Companies Stalled, Domestic Replacement Relies on Local Players

Around 2015, the global FPGA market had already shown a highly concentrated market structure of “two large, two small”. The “two large” refers to Xilinx and Altera, while the “two small” refers to Lattice and Microsemi.

In the electronics industry, the leader eats meat, the second drinks soup, and the scraps are enough to fill the gaps for the third. The two major FPGA oligarchs occupy nearly 90% of the FPGA market share, while Chinese manufacturers hold an estimated share of less than 4%.

Lattice was the first FPGA supplier to enter China, but taking the lead did not give Lattice a first-mover advantage. By the late 1990s, as Xilinx and Altera gradually turned their attention to China, Lattice’s market was gradually eroded.

Since the 1990s, the Chinese academic community has also begun to explore FPGA technology, with Fudan University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences being significant players. After 2010, well-known domestic FPGA companies such as Anlu Technology, Xi’an Zhiduo Crystal, Unisoc, and Guangdong Gaoyun were established one after another.

In the exploration of FPGA, China has gradually moved from reverse design to forward design, and domestic demand for FPGA applications has also been growing. However, to this day, domestic manufacturers still do not rank among the global FPGA representatives.

In November 2016, a Chinese-backed private equity fund, Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, attempted to acquire Lattice for $1.3 billion, but this transaction was blocked by the US Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) a year later due to national security concerns.

Many tech companies involved in overseas mergers and acquisitions are familiar with the “roadblock” of CFIUS. Previous cases include Fujitsu’s acquisition of Fairchild Semiconductor being rejected, Unisoc’s acquisition of Micron Technology being blocked, and the acquisition of German semiconductor equipment manufacturer Aisic by Fujian Hongxin Fund being interrupted, all thanks to CFIUS.

The failure of the Lattice acquisition means that China cannot take the shortcut of overseas mergers and acquisitions to achieve FPGA independence and control. Developing domestic FPGA companies is currently the most feasible and necessary path.

Whether in traditional aerospace, communications, industry, consumer electronics, or emerging markets such as AI, 5G communications, industrial internet, autonomous driving, cloud computing, edge computing, and the Internet of Things, the demand for FPGA continues to rise.

According to market research firm MRFR, the global FPGA market was approximately $4.562 billion in 2013, reached about $6.9 billion last year, and is expected to exceed $10 billion by 2022.

▲FPGA market growth from 2013 to 2025 (Source: Tianfeng Securities)

Theoretically, if the scale of the gate circuit is large enough, FPGA can realize any chip’s logic function through programming, which is why it is known as the “universal chip”.

Compared to general-purpose chips such as CPUs and GPUs, FPGA has higher parallel computing efficiency, faster computing speed, and lower power consumption and latency.

In contrast to fixed-function chips (ASIC) that cannot be modified, FPGA has the advantages of high flexibility, short development cycle, and low cost for small batches due to its reprogrammable nature, allowing it to adapt more quickly to market demand changes.

This makes FPGA a unique presence in rapidly changing application fields and a fortress that domestic FPGA suppliers must conquer.

Whether in the burgeoning construction of 5G base stations or in heterogeneous computing with cloud-edge AI acceleration, as long as the 5G standards continue to evolve and the demands of AI algorithms and IoT have not yet solidified, FPGA will play a crucial role.

▲Comparison of chip value required for 4G and 5G base stations (Source: Tianfeng Securities)

The importance of FPGA in multiple markets is increasing day by day. Additionally, the US holds an absolute monopoly advantage in this field, making FPGA an effective tool for constraining trade with other countries.

As the US further escalates its export control measures, more and more domestic manufacturers realize that the most effective weapon against technological isolationism is self-reliance.

Shouldering the Banner of Domestic Replacement! Eight Domestic FPGA Players

In recent years, in addition to gaining experience in the military industry, domestic FPGA companies have applied their self-developed products in communication, industry, military aerospace, and consumer electronics, and have begun to extend into data centers and smart terminals.

▲Distribution of China’s FPGA industry market (Source: Anlu Technology)

Currently, most mainstream domestic FPGA products adopt 55nm and 40nm process technologies, while the most advanced FPGA processes are still at 28nm, which is significantly behind the international advanced level that has already reached 7nm.

However, optimistically, domestic FPGA players have begun to accelerate their pace. On one hand, they are chasing high-end FPGAs, while on the other hand, they have the strength to replace international FPGA products in some civilian mid-to-low-end markets.

Here we will list eight domestic FPGA manufacturers that are likely to sprint into the civilian mid-to-high-end FPGA market, including one company from Beijing, three from Shanghai, one from Guangzhou, one from Shenzhen, one from Xi’an, and one from Chengdu.

The following ranking is in reverse order of establishment time:

▲Major domestic FPGA companies

1、Jingwei Qili: Second Entrepreneurship, Aiming at AI Cloud Edge

In terms of establishment time, Jingwei Qili is the latest, founded in June 2017. However, in terms of ambition and experience, Jingwei Qili is not inferior to other domestic FPGA manufacturers.

Jingwei Qili was established in June 2017, positioning itself as the best domestic FPGA and next-generation heterogeneous programmable computing chip supplier in China.

Its founder and CEO, Wang Haili, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the National University of Defense Technology and obtained a master’s and doctorate from Tsinghua University in EDA.

At the end of 2015, while still a PhD student at Tsinghua University, Wang Haili joined a newly established Sino-foreign joint venture FPGA company, Yagro Technology, which was renamed “Jingwei Yage” in 2010 with the support of guiding funds from Beijing.

With support from national and local projects, Jingwei Yage successfully developed a series of FPGA products from low to high specifications. Unfortunately, due to unfavorable circumstances, by 2016, the company faced operational difficulties due to multiple reasons such as hindered market promotion and delayed project funding, resulting in over a hundred employees leaving.

With the consent of the original company’s shareholders, Wang Haili and seven remaining employees established Jingwei Qili in June 2017. Within two months, they secured nearly 7 million yuan in angel investment, and in January the following year, they received several million yuan in Pre-A round financing led by Hikvision Fund.

In terms of talent, the original company’s core technology team was among the first batch of members to design FPGA chips in China. Wang Haili has recruited some of these experts back, expanding the team to over 50 people.

After regrouping, Jingwei Qili obtained authorization and secondary development rights for over a hundred patents and proprietary technologies from Jingwei Yage. It not only provides traditional FPGA chips for communication, industry, and medical scenarios but also aims at emerging scenarios such as cloud servers and consumer smart terminals, developing three major product lines: the new generation AI programmable chip AiPGA, the edge heterogeneous chip HPA, and the embedded programmable eFPGA.

As of September 2019, the company had achieved sales exceeding 10 million yuan, surpassing the total for the previous year. In addition to the mass-produced 40nm FPGA chips, the company is also focusing on mid-to-high-end FPGA products and has begun developing the next generation of 28nm/22nm FPGA products.

2、Shanghai Aoge Chip: Entering the Ecosystem from Compilation Software

Shanghai Aoge Microelectronics (AGM) was established two years earlier than Jingwei Qili and is a provider of mid-to-low-end, low-density FPGA chips.

The company was founded by a team from a well-known programmable logic chip enterprise in Silicon Valley and a senior engineering team from China, starting with the development of proprietary compilation software, compatible with the existing FPGA software ecosystem.

In its first two years, the background-less AGM team squeezed into a co-working space in Zhangjiang, Shanghai, quietly refining products and offering trials to customers.

After noticing the smartphone boom, AGM launched an FPGA chip for smartphones and the Internet of Things, passing Samsung’s strict supplier testing certification, becoming the only alternative FPGA device for Samsung Galaxy phones aside from Lattice, achieving a zero export breakthrough for domestic FPGA companies.

After several years of product iterations and market expansion, AGM has gradually accumulated a stable customer base and formed multiple product lines targeting CPLD, FPGA, FPGA+CPU, SoC, etc., covering consumer electronics, industrial, communications, and AI computing markets, becoming a standout “dark horse” in the domestic FPGA field.

3、Guangdong Gaoyun: First 28nm Mid-to-High-Density FPGA

Compared to AGM, Guangdong Gaoyun Semiconductor may have relatively higher recognition in domestic FPGA.

Its CEO Zhu Jinghui and SVP Song Ning both worked at Lattice. Zhu graduated from Tsinghua University and worked at Lattice from 1996 to 2011, experiencing the development of seven generations of FPGA products; Song served as a senior engineer at both Lattice and Cadence.

Currently, its R&D team has over 100 people, with research centers established in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Jinan. Core technical personnel have more than 15 years of experience in core FPGA software and hardware development; its products have penetrated over ten industries and are applied in communications, industrial control, and consumer fields.

Since its establishment in 2014, Gaoyun Semiconductor has insisted on forward design, launching two families of products, Chengxi and Xiaomifeng, covering 11 models and more than 50 packaging types, along with proprietary EDA development software that continues to improve.

In the first quarter of 2015, the company mass-produced the first domestically industrialized 55nm 4 million gate mid-density FPGA chip and opened development software for download. In the first quarter of 2016, it successfully launched the first domestically produced 55nm embedded Flash SRAM non-volatile FPGA chip; in 2018, Gaoyun announced the successful development of China’s first 28nm mid-to-high-density FPGA chip GW3AT-100.

In 2019, Gaoyun Semiconductor made significant strides towards expanding into emerging computing platforms, achieving productization of heterogeneous SoC FPGA, launching various FPGA products supporting Arm and RISC-V soft/hard cores, and developing the GoAI solution, which improved performance by over 78 times compared to using Cortex-M class microcontrollers alone.

4、Shenzhen Unisoc: High-Performance FPGA Mass Production and Commercialization

Anlu Technology, Unisoc, and Gaoyun Semiconductor have been referred to by Taiwanese media as the “three horse-drawn carriages of domestic FPGA”.

Unisoc is a subsidiary of Unisoc Group, established in 2013, with over ten years of experience in the development of programmable logic devices, covering mid-to-high-end FPGA products.

Unisoc possesses full-process development capabilities for large-scale FPGA, with its products covering aerospace, communication networks, information security, AI, data centers, and industrial IoT.

As early as 2015, Unisoc successfully launched the first domestically produced high-performance FPGA chip with over ten million gates, the Titan series, using 40nm technology, with programmable logic resources reaching up to 180,000, which has been widely applied in communications and information security.

The high-end FPGA product PGT180H from the Titan series has been supplied in bulk to several leading domestic communication equipment manufacturers, with sales of this model reaching nearly 100 million yuan last year.

This March, Unisoc launched the Logos-2 series of cost-effective FPGAs, using 28nm CMOS technology, which improved performance by 50% compared to the previous generation 40nm Logos series FPGA, while reducing total power consumption by 40%, meeting the needs of industrial automation, IoT, and video image processing applications, and has been mass-produced and shipped.

5、Xi’an Zhiduo Crystal: Xiaomi is the Fourth Largest Shareholder

Last September, Xiaomi’s Changjiang Xiaomi Industrial Fund invested 2.277 million yuan in Zhiduo Crystal, holding 9.26% of the shares, becoming the fourth largest shareholder of Zhiduo Crystal.

The founder of Zhiduo Crystal, Jia Hong, is also a Tsinghua alumnus. He entered Tsinghua University in 1982, went to the US in 1992 for further studies, and in 2012, he and several like-minded friends returned to his hometown in Shaanxi Province to start a business in the rapidly developing Xi’an High-tech Zone, establishing Zhiduo Crystal, and later set up an EDA software research center in Beijing.

Its founding team has over 20 years of experience in FPGA design and manufacturing, having worked for leading companies in this field overseas and held technical leadership positions in various specialties.

Zhiduo Crystal developed the first intelligent FPGA chip with independent intellectual property rights in October 2013, reportedly becoming the fifth team to cross the technical threshold after four American companies.

▲Zhiduo Crystal’s exhibition booth

Currently, Zhiduo Crystal has achieved mass production of 55nm and 40nm mid-density FPGAs and has launched integrated solutions such as embedded Flash and SDRAM. As of 2018, it had shipped 2KK chips in bulk, and in 2019, chip sales are expected to exceed 100 million yuan.

Its products cover markets including LED drivers, video surveillance, image processing, smart instruments, industrial control, 4G/5G communication networks, and data centers, and it has established partnerships with well-known companies such as Fujitsu, Nova Electronics, and Hikvision, and has begun developing and testing smart face recognition chips.

Last year, the company was actively planning the R&D and landing of 28nm FPGA chips.

In addition, Zhiduo Crystal also acquired the pioneer of platform-based FPGA software solutions, Beijing Piaoshi Technology, in 2017, further improving its software layout. Piaoshi Technology, established in 2007, has participated in or independently completed the development software support for over 30 mainstream FPGA manufacturers and FPGA startups.

6、Shanghai Anlu Technology: 28nm to be Mass-Supplied This Year

On May 19, 2020, at the Shanghai Science and Technology Awards Conference, Shanghai Anlu Technology’s project “Independent FPGA R&D and Industrialization Based on Hybrid Grain Logic Structure” won the third prize of the Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award in 2019.

Anlu Technology was established in 2011, headquartered in Zhangjiang, Shanghai. In 2014, it received investment from CITIC Capital, followed by investments from Hangzhou Silan Micro and Shenzhen Skyworth Group in 2015, and strategic investments from Huada Semiconductor and Shanghai Technology in 2017.

The Anlu Technology team has expanded from 120 people at the beginning of 2019 to over 200 people, with mass-produced and in-development products covering mid-to-high-end, targeting data centers, AI, communications, industrial control, and video surveillance.

Previously, Anlu Technology’s mass-produced mid-range FPGA chips successfully entered the LED display control card market and the HD television TCON control card market, and it plans to conduct in-depth cooperation with domestic communication companies.

In 2019, Shanghai Anlu Technology achieved a threefold increase in performance and entered the mainstream communication market, with FPGA products covering key models of small and medium capacity, capable of replacing most foreign counterparts, while Anlu’s large-capacity devices are also in full development.

Its FPGAs have transitioned from 55/40nm to the mainstream 28nm process platform, with significant improvements in device performance and capacity, which in turn has raised the requirements for FPGA compilation software and IP. The 28nm devices are expected to be mass-produced in 2020.

In terms of supply, Anlu has adopted a domestic supply chain, with most chip design, production, packaging, and testing done domestically, resulting in significant advantages in supply cycle.

In an interview with the media earlier this year, Anlu Technology’s general manager, Wen Yubo, mentioned that in addition to meeting communication and industrial control needs, a small number of chips are being placed in the consumer electronics market. Even at prices equivalent to international advanced devices, customers are willing to prioritize Anlu’s chips, citing better performance and quality than foreign competitors.

According to public reports, Anlu Technology is expected to achieve mass production of 10 million gate-level products this year and complete the R&D of 50 million gate-level products.

7、Chengdu Huawai Technology: Originating from the National “909” Project

Chengdu Huawai Technology is a national “909” project integrated circuit design company and one of the first batch of nationally certified integrated circuit design enterprises, registered in March 2000.

The company was jointly established by Huada Group, Chengdu University of Electronic Science and Technology Park, Chengdu Innovation Venture Capital, and the Chengdu Huawai employee team, and is a military-civilian integration enterprise based in Chengdu, specializing in microelectronics, computing, communications, electronic information, and software.

Its R&D team, along with the large-scale integrated circuit design center under the major shareholder, has formed a strong research and development cooperation platform.

Chengdu Huawai Technology mainly engages in the development of programmable logic devices, system-level chips, memory, AD/DA chips, and power management devices, continuously undertaking major national FPGA projects during the “11th Five-Year”, “12th Five-Year”, and “13th Five-Year” plans, and is at the forefront of the domestic programmable logic device and high-speed high-precision ADC/DAC fields.

Currently, Chengdu Huawai Technology is the design technology innovation center for heterogeneous programmable systems on chip under the China Electronics Technology Group.

8、Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics: Ultra-Large Scale FPGA with Hundreds of Millions of Gates

On March 20 of this year, Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics announced its counseling filing, with CITIC Securities as the counseling agency, aiming for a listing on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board.

Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics was established in 1998 in the Yifu Building of Fudan University and was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2000. It plans to go public on A-shares in 2019 and has changed its counseling agency to aim for the Sci-Tech Innovation Board this year.

The company has nearly 20 years of research and development in the FPGA field and is one of the few research institutions in China that independently develops FPGA.

In the early stages, Fudan Microelectronics developed independently owned FPGA products with millions of gates, breaking through high reliability designs based on traditional integrated circuit design. Its high reliability performance has been tested to be at the international leading level. This series of products has been successfully applied in major engineering projects such as China’s satellite navigation and manned spaceflight.

In May 2018, at the second China University Technology Achievement Trading Conference, Fudan Microelectronics launched a new generation of FPGA products with independent intellectual property rights, filling the gap of ultra-large scale FPGA with hundreds of millions of gates in China. Various indicators have reached the advanced level of international similar products.

How Much Effort Does the Domestic Industry Need to Reach High-End FPGA?

It is clear that although domestic FPGA companies are making efforts, objectively, the performance strength and market share of existing domestic FPGAs are significantly behind the international advanced level.

▲Technology level gap of domestic FPGA (Source: Anlu Technology)

Faced with a strong and clearly divided international FPGA landscape, breaking through in technology and market is no easy task. To shorten these gaps, it is evident that it cannot rely solely on head-down research and development.

First, high-end FPGA must be conquered. After all, American companies monopolize the vast majority of FPGA patents and markets, while Japan, South Korea, and European countries do not have advanced FPGA companies. If the US escalates export control measures, China’s communication industry will find it difficult to avoid the impact of high-end FPGA shortages.

To promote technological research and development, it is essential to grasp highlights: first, adopting more advanced process technologies, and second, developing innovative architectures.

The more advanced the process technology, the more transistors can be included in the same chip area, significantly enhancing performance and reducing power consumption. Therefore, leading international FPGA manufacturers have begun to adopt the most advanced process technologies.

However, the more advanced the process technology, the higher the R&D and production costs, leading to the R&D of advanced FPGAs having a “high and far” connotation.

The most advanced domestic FPGA is still based on 28nm technology, with tape-out costs nearing ten million yuan, while the market share available to domestic FPGAs is very limited. If they invest heavily to tackle even more advanced process nodes, the risk of failing to recoup costs is significant. Therefore, government and more capital support are particularly necessary.

In addition, from the layout of the two oligarchs, Xilinx and Intel Altera, in the FPGA field in recent years, we can see that advanced FPGAs are no longer solely relying on process iterations to achieve new performance goals. The future evolution of FPGAs will increasingly depend on innovations in chip architecture. The new trends in product and market layout by these giants also provide certain reference value for the development direction of China’s FPGA.

In addition to improving hardware performance, optimizing supporting software tools is equally important.

One key reason why FPGAs are considered “niche” is the high programming technical threshold. FPGA requires close cooperation between hardware and software to truly unleash its performance. The programming uses hardware description languages such as Verilog or VHDL, which are inherently complex, coupled with the need to consider the diversity, complexity, and efficiency of application scenarios during design, making compilation challenging for many engineers.

The ratio of software development engineers in leading international companies has reached 50%, and both Xilinx and Intel Altera are focused on continuously lowering the development threshold for FPGA through software optimization.

For example, Xilinx launched a unified software platform, Vitis, last year, allowing software developers to efficiently develop hardware; Intel unveiled its oneAPI for heterogeneous computing, enabling developers to work across CPU, GPU, FPGA, and ASIC architectures.

▲Xilinx’s unified software platform Vitis for software developers

However, domestic companies generally have a lower ratio of software development engineers, and the supporting software and tools are relatively lacking, with a high degree of reliance on upstream EDA software tools and IP cores. Achieving independent replacement and enhancing the competitiveness of the domestic FPGA industry clearly requires joint efforts from the entire domestic ecosystem, including the construction of a complete ecosystem from EDA and IP cores to chips and applications.

Some domestic FPGA players are already working to improve the development ecosystem for domestic FPGAs. For example, recently, Unisoc collaborated with domestic FPGA solution provider Alinx to launch a low-cost domestic entry-level FPGA development kit, with prices as low as 470 yuan for the development board and downloader package, providing a more affordable FPGA development platform for beginners, college students, and research institutes.

Another key factor hindering the development of the domestic FPGA ecosystem is the lack of educational resources and talent. Third-party data indicates that there are around 300,000 FPGA engineers in the US, while China has only about 20,000 to 30,000 FPGA engineers, roughly 1/10 of the US total.

On one hand, the high difficulty of hardware description language programming, relatively scarce educational resources, and high development costs have kept many developers away from FPGAs. On the other hand, excellent FPGA talent tends to concentrate in top FPGA companies, leaving domestic FPGA forces at a disadvantage in attracting high-end talent.

Existing high-end talent can be attracted by optimizing the domestic innovation and entrepreneurship environment, but filling the talent gap must rely on education.

Due to the evident technological gap, it is challenging to catch up in the short term. Finding the right market positioning and formulating practical product routes may be more crucial for a company’s survival.

Conclusion

The arduous journey of the domestic FPGA industry is just a microcosm of the evolution of China’s integrated circuit industry. In the context of turbulent geopolitical conflicts, achieving independent control over key chips has become a necessary choice for maintaining the speed of China’s information technology development and safeguarding national integrity.

However, truly achieving independent control over the entire industrial chain cannot rely solely on one Huawei HiSilicon; more domestic chip manufacturers need to prepare for future challenges and develop more self-research chips that can replace international products.

The road to catching up with international advanced chip levels remains arduous and long, but some things persist not because of hope, but because of the determination to hold on until the end and finally see the dawn.

We look forward to domestic manufacturers delivering surprising results in the future and should give enough respect and tolerance to the semiconductor practitioners who are carrying heavy burdens.

(This account is a signed account of NetEase News·NetEase No. “Each Has Its Attitude”)

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