March 29 Leifeng.com(Public Number: Leifeng.com)According to the news, Huawei listed the latest business structure diagram in its 2021 annual report. As can be seen from the figure, HiSilicon became independent from the second-level department under the 2012 laboratory and upgraded to a first-level department of Huawei. Energy and ICT products and solutions are tied at the same level.
In addition, in 2021, in addition to taking out HiSilicon separately, Huawei will also remove the original consumer BG, and multiple departments such as terminal BG and Huawei cloud computing will be responsible respectively, and a series of adjustments have been made to the functional platform.
According to public information, the main carrier of Huawei’s R&D system was Huawei’s 2012 laboratory, which consists of secondary departments such as the Central Research Institute, the Central Software Institute, the Central Hardware Institute, and HiSilicon.
However, although HiSilicon is a secondary department in name, its internal status is very high.
Huawei insiders have revealed that HiSilicon has a detached status and is actually a first-level department, and it was basically out of control in 2012. He Tingbo is not only the president of HiSilicon, but also the president of 2012. At the same time, she is also a member of Huawei’s board of directors, and her status is higher than that of some first-level department bosses.
HiSilicon is the semiconductor subsidiary behind Huawei, carrying the research and development and sales of Huawei chips.
Its product line coverage can be divided into five categories: 1. Mobile phone Soc, 2. Connectivity chips (baseband chips, base station chips, etc.), 3. Server chips, 4. AI chips, 5. Other chips. The main product series include Kirin series mobile phone SOC chips, Balong series 5G basebands, Tiangang series 5G base stations, Kunpeng server chips, Ascend AI chips, Lingxiao IoT chips, etc.
In the first quarter of 2019, HiSilicon’s sales reached US$1.755 billion, and its semiconductor sales ranking jumped from 25th to 11th in the world; in the first quarter of 2020, HiSilicon’s sales reached US$2.67 billion, and its ranking rose again. , among the top ten.
But HiSilicon has always been doing chip design, not chip manufacturing. After HiSilicon completes the chip design, it will be handed over to the foundry company TSMC for manufacturing.
In 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce added Huawei to the Entity List for export control, which seriously affected HiSilicon’s business of independently developing chip production. Under the sanctions, TSMC no longer provides foundry for HiSilicon, and SMIC’s technology cannot meet the requirements of HiSilicon Kirin chips, and HiSilicon’s high-end chip line was completely shelved.
Although SMIC stated that it still has cooperation with HiSilicon, SMIC’s chip foundry capabilities are mainly reflected in the 14nm process and above, and there is still a big gap with TSMC and Samsung. For example, the 5nm process Kirin 9000 is temporarily unavailable. of. Therefore, the cooperation between Huawei HiSilicon and SMIC is mainly on chips with less demanding process requirements.
Judging from the financial report data, after four rounds of sanctions, HiSilicon’s revenue fell sharply.
According to Strategy Analytics, in the first quarter of 2021, Huawei HiSilicon’s smartphone processor shipments dropped by 88% compared to the same period in 2020; correspondingly, HiSilicon’s revenue in the first quarter of 2021 was only $385 million, That’s down 87% from the same period last year.
In addition, the adverse reaction of HiSilicon’s mobile phone chips being blocked is also directly reflected in the sales of Huawei’s smartphones.
According to the Canalys 2021 Q1 China research report, Huawei’s mobile phone shipments were only about 14.9 million units, a year-on-year decline of 50%, and the market accounted for 16%, lower than OPPO and vivo.
High-end chips cannot be produced, where should Huawei HiSilicon go?
Chen Lifang, a director of Huawei, said that the HiSilicon division will not make any decision on restructuring or layoffs. She revealed that HiSilicon will have more than 7,000 employees in 2020, so maintaining this part will be a serious financial burden for Huawei, but Huawei is privately held and not affected by external forces, and its management has made it clear that HiSilicon will remain.
Xu Zhijun, Huawei’s rotating chairman, also said that HiSilicon is a chip design department at Huawei, not a profitable company, and has no profit appeal to it. Now it’s about raising this team and moving forward as long as we can afford it. This team can continue to research, develop and prepare for the future.
Despite the difficulties, HiSilicon is still recruiting talents to invest in technology research and development.
Since the end of last year, Huawei’s HiSilicon Semiconductor and Device Business Department has started the 2022 campus recruitment. The working locations include Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Xi’an, Dongguan, Wuhan, Chengdu, Suzhou, etc. The recruitment positions involve chips and devices. Design engineers, software development engineers, hardware technical engineers, AI engineers, algorithm engineers, etc.
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