Article reprinted from: Electronic Engineering Album

Original link: https://www.eet-china.com/news/202305246292.html

Recently, Gu Zhengshu, a senior industry analyst at AspenCore, interviewed Ms. Chen Qiao, Marketing Director of Core Semiconductor, and had in-depth discussions on the company's development history, MCU and other chip product planning, chip research and development process and quality control, market application solutions, and future strategic development. Here is a summary in the form of Q&A, hoping to fully showcase the advantages of core semiconductor products, applications, and channels for readers.

Chen Qiao, Marketing Director of Wuhan Xinyuan Semiconductor

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Core Source in transitioning from distribution to chip design?

Liyuan Information indeed has many years of experience in the semiconductor distribution industry, which enables us to obtain the latest industry trends and product information from European and American original factories and domestic leading enterprises in the first time. At the same time, we can understand market trends and demands from different customer groups in different industries, so as to more accurately grasp market cycle changes. In this way, Core Source can be fully prepared at the right time to provide the market with suitable self-developed chip products.

If we want to talk about the disadvantages of distribution background, I think it is still the differences in concepts among industry friends. In the mindset of some peers, it may be difficult for distribution companies to excel in independent chip research and development. In fact, this can also be understood, because the distribution industry mostly follows well-known technology, industry, and trade routes. However, our core source has its own excellent design and operation team, combined with the more than 20 years of market insights accumulated by Liyuan Group in its distribution business, as well as the grasp of customer pain points, we are confident in the ability to bring customers self developed chip products with higher cost-effectiveness.

As a subsidiary of Liyuan Information, what resources support does Xinyuan receive in chip research and development, quality control, and sales channels?

Xinyuan is very fortunate to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of listed company Liyuan Group, which means we can obtain excellent financial support. Fundamentally, due to the hard power of the group company, we can establish the best design and marketing teams with the ability to produce high-quality products that meet the actual needs of customers. We are also able to plan our product Roadmap completely, providing customers with more choices, and supporting customer selection requirements for products at different levels. Thanks to these supports, we can think more for our customers in product design, and our cooperation with Foundry Factory and Sealing Factory also shows that we are willing to invest more in various aspects of production to ensure our quality.

When it comes to support in sales channels, the sister companies under Liyuan Group have provided us with a lot of support. For example, one of its subsidiaries, Nanjing Feiteng, mainly engages in meter manufacturing. Through them, we can reach more electricity meter customers, and the combination of OEM mode is more conducive to pushing our products to the end customers of electricity meters. Another example is Shanghai Patai, which is a distribution company specializing in passive components. As agents of several TOP Japanese factories, they have accumulated many high-quality industry leading customers. When the core source needs support, we will also combine their strength to serve customers, recommend more cost-effective products to customers, and accumulate our brand awareness among customers.

In addition, Liyuan Information and Shenzhen Dingxin are both distributors of active components. From them, we can learn about the products and market information of the original manufacturers of head chips in Europe, America, and China, which is beneficial for us to layout our subsequent product planning. Overall, although Xinyuan has its own independent marketing and operation team and a self built agency distribution system, with the advantages shared by the group's sister companies, we can be closer to the market, products, and customers than our domestic IC design peers.

The core source MCU adopts the 110 nanometer process of Huahong Hongli, and is currently the most reliable wafer foundry production line in China, which has undergone extensive practical verification. Huahong has a comprehensive quality system and a strict control process for design quality, with good control over product quality from the chip manufacturing side. In addition, in terms of packaging testing, we cooperate with well-known domestic packaging testing manufacturers Huatian and Changdian to ensure the quality of our MCU products and enhance their comprehensive competitiveness.

What is the plan for the MCU product line of Xinyuan? What are the advantages and disadvantages compared to MCU peer products?

MCU is essentially a product that serves the mass market. That is to say, the customer base is very extensive, and the applications are also diverse. In order to meet the segmented requirements of customers in different industries for product characteristics, we must make our product series more comprehensive and our product lineup larger. On the basis of making universal MCUs (such as the CW32F003 series), we have developed sealed wireless MCU products (CW32R030/W031) tailored to specific application requirements. At the same time, in response to specific market demands, we may also develop specialized chips for customers, which is actually gradually evolving into a customized development approach.

As for the disadvantage compared to our domestic counterparts, as our products are currently designed based on the Cortex M0+core, we may not be able to cover the traditional 8-bit microcontroller market demand due to strict price requirements. This is also related to the customer's application itself. If the customer's product needs to be upgraded, I believe our product will definitely be one of their choices.

MCU Cortex-M0+ CW32 Series Products

Our universal high-performance CW32F series MCU has the following advantages:

Wide working voltage: 1.65V-5.5V; Wide working temperature: -40 ℃ -105 ℃;

Adopting the Prefetch+Cache architecture, the computing power/power ratio of the same frequency CoreMark surpasses similar products;

12 bit high-speed ADC, capable of achieving ± 1.0 LSB INL and 11.3 ENOB (significant digits);

Stable and reliable eFLASH process ensures highly reliable industrial applications;

HBM ESD 8KV, all ESD reliability reaches the highest level of international standards.

There are many market applications for MCU products, and which target markets are the company's key development areas?

The first is the industrial automation market. We prefer applications that reflect the performance advantages of our products. For example, motor and battery applications that require strict reliability requirements, IoT applications that require a wide temperature and voltage range, and sensor applications that require high ADC sampling accuracy and simulation performance.

The second is the application in the meter industry. For example, customers in the gas and water meter industries require products with low power consumption and excellent overall performance, while ensuring quality. In the past, most customers used foreign brands such as ST and Reza. Our products can also provide customers with quality that is no less than that of foreign brands, while meeting their localization and substitution requirements. This is very important for our brand reputation accumulation.

In addition to MCU, the company also has EEPROM and MOSFET product lines. What is the future product portfolio development strategy?

In fact, before launching MCU products, the first self-developed products owned by Xinyuan were EEPROMs based on the Huahong 95nm process, as well as MOSFET products using the same Huahong deep groove superjunction process. Although MCU was launched relatively late, it has a wider range of applications and can reach more customers. With the continuous penetration of MCU in the client, once our MCU quality and performance are recognized, we will further promote EEPROM and MOSFET products. For example, in the gas meter industry, we can use low-power MCU with EEPROM to provide customers.

In some cases, we first imported MOSFET or EEPROM products, and now we import MCU, which can further deepen the customer relationship. For example, in the application of adaptive power supply, customers have been using MOSFETs for several years, and at the appropriate time, we can recommend our MCU products to customers. With the continuous iteration of new products, there will be more and more matching sales methods, and customers' recognition of us will continue to increase. Our viscosity with customers will also increase accordingly.