IC is a general term for semiconductor component products, including:

1. integrated circuit

2. Second, the triode.

3. Special electronic components.

More broadly, it also involves all electronic components, such as resistors, capacitors, circuit boards /PCB boards and many other related products.

1. Changes and development of the world integrated circuit industry structure

Since 1958, Texas Instruments (TI) invented integrated circuit (IC), with the development of silicon plane technology, bipolar and MOS integrated circuits were invented in 1960s, which marked a quantitative and qualitative leap in the era of electron tubes and transistor electronic devices, and created a new integrated circuit industry with unprecedented penetration and vitality.

Looking back on the development of integrated circuits, we can see that the phrase "from circuit integration to system integration" is the best summary of the development process of IC products from small-scale integrated circuits (SSI) to today's very large-scale integrated circuits (ULSI), that is, the development of the whole integrated circuit products has changed from the traditional system level to the system level. In this historical process, in order to adapt to the development of technology and the demand of the market, the industrial structure of the world integrated circuit industry has undergone three changes.

The first transformation: the initial stage of the development of integrated circuit industry dominated by processing and manufacturing.

In 1970s, the mainstream products of integrated circuits were microprocessors, memories and standard general logic circuits. During this period, integrated circuit manufacturers (IDM) played a major role in the integrated circuit market, and integrated circuit design only existed as a subsidiary department. At this time, integrated circuit design is closely related to semiconductor technology. IC design is mainly manual, and CAD system is only used for data processing and graphic programming. The integrated circuit industry is only in the primary production-oriented stage.

The second revolution: the rise of foundry and IC design companies.

In 1980s, the mainstream products of integrated circuits were microprocessor (MPU), microcontroller (MCU) and application specific integrated circuit (ASIC). At this time, the combination of Fabless and OEM without production line began to become a new model for the development of integrated circuit industry.

With the wide application and popularization of microprocessors and PCs (especially in communication, industrial control, consumer electronics and other fields), the integrated circuit industry has begun to enter a customer-oriented stage. On the one hand, IC with standardized functions can hardly meet customers' requirements for system cost and reliability. At the same time, the customers of the whole machine demand to continuously improve the integration of IC, improve the confidentiality, reduce the chip area, reduce the system volume, reduce the cost and improve the cost performance of products, thus enhancing the competitiveness of products and gaining more market share and more lucrative profits. On the other hand, due to the progress of integrated circuit micromachining technology, it is possible to hardware the software. In order to improve the speed of the system and simplify the program, ASIC with various hardware structures, such as gate array, programmable logic device (including FPGA), standard cell and fully customized circuit, appeared, accounting for 12% of the total IC sales. Thirdly, with the development of EDA tools (electronic design automation tools), PCB design methods are introduced into ic design, such as the concept of library, process simulation parameters and their simulation concepts, and the design begins to enter the abstract stage, so that the design process can exist independently of the production process. Seeing the market and development prospect of ASIC, far-sighted machine manufacturers and entrepreneurs, including venture capital funds (VC), began to set up professional design companies and IC design departments, and fabless integrated circuit design companies or design departments without production lines were established and developed rapidly. At the same time, it also led to the rise of standard manufacturing lines. The first foundry in the world is Taiwan Province Integrated Circuit Company, which was established in 1987. Its founder, Zhang Zhongmou, is also called "the father of wafer processing".

The Third Reform: Integrated Circuit Industry with "Four Industries Separated"

In the 1990s, with the rise of the Internet, the integrated circuit industry entered an advanced stage of competition-oriented, and the international competition changed from the original resource competition and price competition to talent knowledge competition and capital-intensive competition. The competition mode of expanding equipment investment with DRAM as the center has become a thing of the past. For example, in 1990, the United States, represented by Intel, voluntarily abandoned the DRAM market, engaged in CPU, made major structural adjustments to the semiconductor industry, and regained the world's semiconductor hegemony. This makes people realize that the increasingly huge integrated circuit industry system is not conducive to the development of the entire integrated circuit industry. Only "division of labor" can be refined and "integration" can become an advantage. As a result, the highly specialized industrial structure of integrated circuits has become a trend, and the independent situation of design industry, manufacturing industry, packaging industry and testing industry has begun to take shape (as shown in the following figure). In recent years, the development of global integrated circuit industry has increasingly shown the advantages of this structure. For example, the integrated circuit industry in Taiwan Province Province is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises, forming a highly differentiated industrial structure. Therefore, since 1996, affected by the Asian economic crisis, the global semiconductor industry has overcapacity and its benefits have declined, while the integrated circuit design industry has achieved sustained growth.

Especially in 1996, 1997 and 1998, the price of DRAM fell, and MPU fell for three years. The growth rate of the world semiconductor industry has been far lower than the previous growth value 17%. If we rely on high-input upgrading technology, pursue large-size silicon wafers and micromachining, reduce costs, and promote its growth from mass production, it will be unsustainable. And IC design enterprises are closer to and understand the market, and directly promote the upgrading of electronic systems through innovative development of high value-added products; At the same time, gain profits from innovation, accumulate capital on the basis of rapid and coordinated development, and drive the renewal and new investment of semiconductor equipment; As the "leader" of the integrated circuit industry, the integrated circuit design industry has injected new impetus and vitality into the growth of the entire integrated circuit industry.

Second, the classification of integrated circuits

According to their functions, integrated circuits can be divided into digital integrated circuits, analog integrated circuits, microwave integrated circuits and other integrated circuits. Among them, digital integrated circuit is the most widely used and fastest developing integrated circuit in recent years. Digital integrated circuits are integrated circuits that transmit, process and process digital signals, which can be divided into general digital integrated circuits and special digital integrated circuits.

Universal integrated circuit: refers to those standard circuits with many users and wide application fields, such as memory (DRAM), microprocessor (MPU) and microcontroller (MCU), which reflect the present situation and level of digital integrated circuits.

Application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) refers to a circuit designed for a specific user and a specific or special purpose.

At present, integrated circuit products have the following design, production and sales models.

1.IC manufacturers (IDM) design, process, package and test the finished chips themselves.

2. The combination of no factory and OEM. The design company will hand over the final physical layout of the designed chip to the foundry for processing and manufacturing. Similarly, the packaging test is also entrusted to professional manufacturers, and the final finished chip is sold as the product of IC design company. For example, Fabless is equivalent to the author and publisher, and Foundry is equivalent to the printing house, and the former should play a leading role in the industry.