The world's integrated circuit industry is recovering

The "2010 World Information Technology Industry Development Annual Report" recently released by the Institute of Electronic Science and Technology Information of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that in 2010, the world's integrated circuit industry entered a phase of recovery, with rapid rebound in the first half of the year, strong market demand, and continued product development. Although the growth rate of the IC industry slowed down in the second half of the year and inventory increased, the total market volume in 2010 still set a historical record.

The "Report" shows that in 2010, as the global economy improved and market demand increased, the semiconductor industry recovered rapidly. In the first quarter of 2010, global semiconductor sales were 69.9 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 65.4% year-on-year; in the second quarter, it continued to maintain a rapid upward trend with sales of 74.8 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 44.7% year-on-year. Although the growth rate has slowed down significantly in the second half of the year, the growth trend has remained until the end of the year.

Statistics show that the annual growth rate of the semiconductor industry in the world in 2010 was more than 30%, which is the highest annual growth rate in the past 10 years. The "Report" believes that the reason for the rapid growth in 2010 is on the one hand that countries have achieved initial results in promoting economic development policies and that the economy has started to pick up; on the other hand, the semiconductor industry has accumulated a lot of rising energy during the international financial crisis in 2010. There has been a concentrated release. “The rapid rebound in the first half of 2010 and the slowdown in the second half of the year are actually spontaneous market corrections, which also indicates that the global semiconductor market is gradually stabilizing.”

The "Report" predicts that due to the continued recovery of the global economy and electronic product market, the global semiconductor market will continue to grow in 2011. Although this figure cannot be compared with the growth rate exceeding 30% in 2010, due to the end of the recession, global semiconductor sales will enter a steady growth stage in the next few years, with an average growth rate of 4% to 6%. In 2014, the total market will reach approximately US$360 billion.

The "Report" also shows that at present, semiconductor technology is changing with each passing day. As the CPU of the competition in the integrated circuit industry, the mainstream product process has transitioned from 45nm to 32nm, and will evolve to 22nm and below in recent years. In 2010, CMOS technology has officially entered the mass production phase of 32nm, and according to the international semiconductor technology development roadmap, it is predicted that it will enter 22nm in 2012. With the continuous reduction of feature sizes, some cutting-edge technologies will also be gradually applied.