Semiconductor inventory adjustments are showing positive signs, with the MCU market, which was among the first to bear the brunt of price pressure, now leading the way as Chinese companies have recently ceased their aggressive price-cutting strategies to clear their inventory. In fact, some MCU product lines have even begun to see price increases.

According to reports from Taiwan’s Economic Daily, MCUs are widely used across various key sectors, including consumer electronics, automotive, and industrial control. The recent increase in pricing suggests a resurgence in end-demand, indicating that the semiconductor industry is on the path to recovery.

Prominent global MCU manufacturers include Renesas, NXP, and Microchip, all of which play essential roles in the global semiconductor industry. On the other hand, Taiwanese companies such as Holtek, Nuvoton, Elan, and Sonix represent the local landscape.

Industry experts attribute the current developments to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused disruptions in the supply chain throughout 2020 and 2021, leading to a frenzied rush to secure semiconductor components. This resulted in a surge in orders and significant price increases for ICs. However, 2022 marked a change in the industry landscape as demand weakened in various end-user applications. MCUs were hit hardest, and manufacturers’ inventories climbed steadily, reaching historical highs, with some industry leaders acknowledging that their inventory levels reached several months’ worth of supply.

To address the challenges posed by these soaring inventories, the MCU industry faced its darkest period from the fourth quarter of last year to the first half of this year. Chinese MCU manufacturers resorted to aggressive price cuts, even drawing renowned IDMs into the price-cutting competition. Fortunately, recent market conditions have started to ease the inventory-clearing phase. Chinese MCU manufacturers, who could no longer bear losses, have stopped selling below cost and have even made slight price adjustments to return to a more reasonable pricing range.

Unnamed Taiwanese MCU manufacturers revealed that as the attitude of Chinese companies towards price-cutting has softened, the pricing gap between products from Taiwanese and Chinese companies have gradually narrowed. Moreover, there are indications of small, urgently needed orders coming in, which will facilitate faster inventory reduction.

According to a report by China’s Jiwei, there have been indications of a positive turnaround in the Chinese MCU market recently. Some components are experiencing inventory replenishment, and certain MCU manufacturers have noted an upward trend in component prices, suggesting a gradual stabilization of prices. Additionally, there is optimism that wafer production costs in the coming year may become more favorable, which could gradually boost profit margins.

It is worth noting that the consumer electronics market has been sluggish for over a year, particularly for consumer-grade general-purpose MCUs, which have seen inventory accumulation. Due to the high inventory levels, many MCU manufacturers have been actively working to reduce their stock levels, leading to intermittent price wars.

Recently, Fudan Micro disclosed research findings indicating that the recovery of the end consumer market is still a gradual process, putting significant pressure on IC design companies. In the consumer market, products such as MCUs and storage solutions have seen some recovery in sales but have not yet shown a noticeable improvement in prices. Additionally, the security and identification product lines face substantial competitive pressure.

Looking at the industry as a whole, the clearance of inventory has not disappeared; it is still expected to return to normal levels by the end of this year or the first half of the next year. For IC design firms, the resolution of high-priced inventory is anticipated to continue impacting profit margins in the latter half of the year.

• The continuous AI integration of smart homes accelerates with the Matter protocol.

In the context of the modern era, smart homes are the AI applications that come second only to smartphones and smartwatches. As the penetration rate of smart home devices increases, more and more AI-enabled devices are permeating into human life, ushering in a large-scale era of personalization. The realization of smart homes not only requires smart appliances but also sensors and energy management systems. The deployment of AI will enhance recognition and control.

The diverse application scenarios of smart homes result in a wide variety of products. Despite the vast market size, there is an issue of product ecosystem fragmentation, leading to slow deployment. This can be addressed through the integration of the smart home market via the Matter protocol. As Matter facilitates communication between different devices through software protocols, the importance of software in devices will increase with the product’s AI capabilities, catering to the demands of edge AI applications.

• The RISC-V architecture is on the rise, and the form of MCUs with NPUs will continue to proliferate.

Although CPUs in MCUs are currently dominated by the Arm architecture, open-source RISC-V is gradually rising. In addition to its features such as customization, modularity, and cost-effectiveness, RISC-V is expected to become one of the advantages in smart home applications. It continues to gain support and application from many major manufacturers, expanding the ecosystem of the RISC-V architecture.

Because TinyML models are much smaller than general-purpose AI, they do not require a large amount of computational resources for deployment. This makes them suitable for IoT devices or smart homes that require large-scale deployment, with significant advantages in both technology and cost. Furthermore, with the diverse range of products in smart homes and the increasing demand for product functionality, the form of MCUs equipped with NPUs will become increasingly common as they adapt to the product’s uniqueness and evolve with AI integration.

The US ban on Chinese industries has left China struggling with a seemingly severe shortage of chips. However, China’s tech giants refuse to surrender; instead, they’re pivoting quickly to survive the game.

Since 2019, the US Department of Commerce has added Chinese leading companies like Huawei to its entity list. Restrictions were expanded in 2020 to include semiconductor manufacturing, making a huge impact on SMIC’s advanced processes below 14nm.

Starting in 2021, the US has been intensifying its control by placing more IC design houses on the list, which include Jingjia (GPU), Shenwei (CPU), Loongson Tech (CPU), Cambricon (AI), Wayzim (RF&GPS), and Yangtze (NAND Flash). Furthermore, the export of advanced EDA tools, equipment, CPUs, and GPUs to China has also been banned.

The goal of such measures is to hinder China’s progress in high-tech fields such as 5G/6G, AI, Cloud computing, and autonomous driving by eroding the dominance of its tech giants over time.

China has been aggressively pursuing a policy of domestic substitution in response to the US’s increasing control. As part of this effort, leading domestic IC design companies like Horizon, Cambricon, Enflame, Biren, Gigadevice, and Nations Technologies have been ramping up their efforts for comprehensive chip upgrades in a variety of applications.

Chinese Brands Ramping up for ASICs

There is a particularly intriguing phenomenon in recent years. Since 2019, China’s leading brands have been venturing into chip design to develop highly specialized ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) at an unprecedented speed. This move is aimed at ensuring a stable supply of chips and also advancing their technical development.

A closer look at how top companies across diverse application fields integrate ASIC chips into their technology roadmap:

• AI Cloud computing: Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent

China’s tech giants are leveraging advanced foundry processes, such as TSMC’s 5nm and Samsung’s 7nm, to produce cutting-edge AI chips for high-end applications like cloud computing, image coding, AI computing, and network chips.

Alibaba launched its AI chip, Hanguang 800, and server CPU, Yitian 710, in 2019 and 2021, respectively. Both chips were manufactured at TSMC’s 5nm process and are extensively used on Alibaba’s cloud computing platform.

In December 2019, Baidu released its AI chip, Kunlun Xin, which uses Samsung’s 14nm process, followed by its 2nd generation, which uses a 7nm process, for AI and image coding.

• Smartphone: Xiaomi, Vivo, OPPO

Due to the high technical threshold of SoC technology used in smartphones, mobile phone brands mainly develop their own chips by optimizing image, audio, and power processing.

In the year of 2021, Xiaomi released the ISP Surge C1, followed by the PMIC Surge P1. Vivo first released the ISP V1 in September 2021, followed by an upgraded product, V1+, in April 2022, and then V2 in November 2022.
OPPO, on the other hand, unveiled the MariSilicon X NPU in December 2021, which enhances the image processing performance of smartphones, using TSMC’s 6nm process, and later revealed the MariSilicon Y Bluetooth audio SoC TSMC’s 6nm RF process later in 2022.

• Home appliance: Konka, Midea, Changhong, Skyworth

The brands are focusing primarily on MCU and PMIC chips that are essential to a wide range of home appliances. They’re also incorporating SoC chips into their smart TVs.

For example, Hisense has jumped into the SoC game in January 2022 by releasing an 8K AI image chip for their smart TVs. Changhong manufactured an MCU with RISC-V architecture and a 40nm process in December 2022.

• Autonomous driving: NIO, Xiaopeng, Li Auto, BYD

The leading companies are developing ISP and highly technical SoC chips for autonomous driving, which has resulted in a slower development process.

In 2020, NIO formed a semiconductor design team for Autonomous driving chips and ISP. Xiaopeng started its Autonomous driving and ISP chip R&D project in the first half of 2021. Li Auto established two subsidiaries in 2022, with a primary focus on power semiconductors and ISP chips.

Finally, BYD, which has a long history of working on MCU and power semiconductor components, also announced its entry into the autonomous driving chip market in 2022.

Navigating the US’ Tech Crackdown

So why are these brands investing so heavily in self-developed ASICs?

One reason is to avoid the risks associated with export control policies from the US and its allies. Developing their own chips would mitigate the risk of supply chain disruptions caused by potential blockades, ensuring a stable supply and the sustainability of their technology roadmap.

In addition, there are many internal incentives for these brands – for instance, companies that have self-developed chips will be eligible for more government subsidies, as this aligns with the government’s aggressive policy to foster the semiconductor industry. Brands can also reduce their reliance on external suppliers by using their own ASIC chips, which can further lower the operating costs.

Technology wise, ASIC chips allow brands to enhance the features they require and enable better integration with the software, which could provide efficiency gains at system level – similar strategies are also being employed by Google and AWS with their AI chips, as well as by Apple with its M1 SoC.

With all things considered, it is certainly possible that we will see a persistent trend of more self-developed ASIC chips made by Chinese brands, which could potentially lead to significant changes in China’s semiconductor supply chain from the ground up.

The global new energy vehicle (NEV) industry has grown by leaps and bounds over the past two years, especially in Chinese markets where 6.46 million NEVs were sold in 2022 — an impressive 89.5% YoY growth. The penetration rate of NEVs jumped from 14.3% in 2021 to 25.6% in 2022.

The global automotive MCU industry has also grown hand in hand, largely in part due to the explosive growth of NEVs and their tight supply-demand relationship. In 2022, the global automotive MCU market generated US$8.286 billion in revenue — an 11.4% YoY growth. Looking ahead to 2023, the market is predicted to grow 4.35%, reaching a value estimation of US$8.646 billion as a result of continued market expansion and technological advancements in the NEV industry.

Automotive MCUs to undergo a technological and demand revolution

More advanced NEVs will demand higher processing power from MCUs, requiring them to bear heavier performance loads. Foundries such as NXP, Renesas, and Infineon are working to improve the performance of their automotive MCUs through a two-pronged approach: Upgrading the manufacturing process and testing out new forms of storage to prevent a performance bottleneck.

Demand for automotive MCUs will be significantly boosted in the short term as NEVs become more intelligent, functional, complex, and comfortable. In the long-term, the electrical architecture of NEVs plans to shift from a decentralized to a more centralized design, consolidating multiple functions into one domain controller. While this will increase performance loads for MCUs, it also means a fewer number will be needed.

Chinese automotive MCU market experiences boom as domestic production ramps up in the face of a global shortage

China’s automotive MCU market has rapidly expanded in the past three years due to two factors: First, a global shortage has provided Chinese manufacturers an opportunity to break into the market. Especially since China is the world’s largest producer of NEVs, which translates to a higher demand for MCUs than any other region. In the past year alone, 16 Chinese manufacturers have launched their own MCUs; while some are currently in the certification process, others have already entered production.

Second, in the midst of a domestic production boom, an increasing number of Chinese automakers have switched to using domestic MCUs. Domestic NEVs account for more than half of China’s market share, providing Chinese MCU manufacturers with more opportunities to cooperate with Chinese automakers. A number of Chinese automakers have even begun investing in domestic MCU manufacturers.

Over the past three years, the rapid expansion of China’s automotive MCU industry has helped them gain a competitive edge within the market. In the mid- to long-term, China’s MCU market will continue to grow thanks to ramped up domestic production and a thriving NEV market.