The core of the future is the chip.

Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “CSDN” (ID: CSDNnews), author Mi Lei, finishing Hu Wei; authorized release.

On August 19, 2019, the “5G Era, New Opportunities for Artificial Intelligence” sharing conference jointly organized by the title school and IEEE was officially held at the Huawei Beijing Research Institute.

On-site, a number of industry experts and corporate executives dismantled the issue from a unique perspective and explained their views and opinions on 5G and artificial intelligence technologies.

Among them, Dr. Mi Lei, founding partner and co-CEO of Zhongke Chuangxing, delivered a keynote speech entitled “Photonics Chip Leading 5G and Artificial Intelligence Era”. The following is a speech recorded by CSDN after being authorized.

Mi Lei:

Hello everyone, I am Mi Lei!

First of all, I believe that every 60 years around the world, we will experience a cycle of technological revolution. Whether it is the steam engine revolution, the electrical revolution, or the integrated circuit revolution, it is basically a 60-year cycle.

Any technology, after 60 years of development, often reaches a technical bottleneck, and the technology diffusion cycle is also 60 years.

Every economic crisis is essentially the end of the last round of the technological revolution. It will lead to a large surplus of production capacity, which will cause the economic environment and political environment that human beings face today. The essence is the revolution of integrated circuits and Moore. After the failure of the law, the economic downturn caused by it.

With the disappearance of the last technological revolution, bringing about the second world war, this global economic and political instability is essentially due to the failure of integrated circuits and Moore’s Law.

Without the Internet of Everything, there is no artificial intelligence

In the past 60 years, one of the world’s major industries is the IT industry. Today’s technology giants are basically IT. the company. IT will remain a major industry for at least 20 years in the future. However, the IT industry will switch from electricity to light. Moreover, artificial intelligence should replace the Internet.

From a general perspective, artificial intelligence is the representative of the next era. However, the infrastructure of artificial intelligence, first of all, is the Internet of Everything. If there is no Internet of Things and Internet of Everything, the era of artificial intelligence will not bring. Just like the Internet, the first is the era of fiber-optic communication. If the communication is not resolved, there is no communication network.

From the 1990s to 2000, if there is no communication network, there will be no Internet age. In the past few years, everyone has said that the era of artificial intelligence is coming. But now, the artificial intelligence boom has slightly declined. I think the core is that the infrastructure is not laid out, and this infrastructure is the Internet of Things.

5G is the infrastructure of the Internet of EverythingShi, and the optoelectronic chip is the infrastructure of 5G

So, what is the infrastructure of the Internet of Things? 5G is the infrastructure of the Internet of Things. Its three characteristics are:

1, super high speed, can solve the flow problem;

2, ultra-low latency, can solve real-time problems, cloud computing can be real-time computing;

3, large connection, only 5G can make all sensors connected to the Internet.

5G and the Internet of Things are the infrastructure of artificial intelligence. Only when 5G is made can there be an era of artificial intelligence in the future.

From the integrated circuits of the 1970s, to the software of the 1980s, the optical communication of the 1990s, to the Internet of 2000 to the present, the next step in the future is the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence.

Now that human beings are in the stage of infrastructure construction, the artificial intelligence era must first build the infrastructure to have the era of artificial intelligence. 5G is the infrastructure of the Internet of Everything, and the optoelectronic chip is the infrastructure of 5G.

From the 1990s to 2000, the industry with the highest return in the United States was the fiber-optic communications industry. The ROI (return on investment) could be more than 100%, up to 272%.

Why is the return so high? Because Clinton began to build the US information highway when he took office in 1993. The United States has emerged from the economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s through the construction of the National Information Highway.

The rise in the economy is achieved through the technological revolution. At the same time, the United States has also completed the liberation of Japan.

In the 1980s, the United States was defeated by Japan at the time. From the automobile industry, the semiconductor industry, to the home appliance industry, the three pillar industries at that time were basically occupied by Japanese companies, so the United States was in a strong sense of crisis. . The United States took financial wars, trade wars, and science and technology wars, and finally defeated Japan through science and technology wars.

In the information industry era, Japanese companies basically have no technology giants, and this is an important reason why the United States is going to suppress Huawei today. Because if China is ahead of 5G and infrastructure, the United States will not be able to lead the Internet in the Internet industry.

Today, China’s 5G infrastructure has been built better than the US. If we continue to do this, then all the technological applications of the United States in the era of artificial intelligence must not be done well in China. Therefore, China will certainly complete its transcendence to the United States in the era of artificial intelligence.

The United States is pressing Huawei, the core of which is the battle for technology, and the core victory and defeat factor of hard technology warfare lies in 5G.

The core of 5G is still the optical chip

What is the most important thing in the United States to suppress 5G? One is a list of the ZTE embargo, and the other is a list of Huawei embargoes. 50% and 60% of them are optical chip companies.

AndIn this list of Huawei embargoes, four of the top five companies with the most losses are optical chip companies. Therefore, the core of 5G is still the optical chip.

You can see that the most important thing is the demand for optical modules. One is to use 25G optical modules (forward) in the 5G base station. The data center has now reached 100G, 400G, where the light is facing. The demand for modules is growing.

So, there are a lot of optical chips in both the prequel and the middle pass. According to the report of CITIC Securities, the fastest growing antennas, optical modules, and wireless small base stations use a lot of light. chip.

The world’s top companies have been deploying optoelectronic chips. In an interview in 2019, Ren Zhengfei said that Huawei bought 500 acres of land in the UK, which is to do optical chips. Because optical chips are now the core, Huawei has also acquired several CIP companies in the UK.

In 2019, Cisco acquired Acacia, a Silicon Light company. Now Cisco is still buying related companies, and Apple is also starting a chip company that collects light sensors.

So, from the past four technological revolutions, its evolution actually began with electromechanical optics.

First, the mechanical revolution. Second, the electrification revolution. Third, the information revolution driven by integrated circuits and optical fiber communication, and fourth, the artificial intelligence revolution driven by optoelectronic chips.

The information age from the integrated circuit to PC software, from the fiber-optic communication to the Internet, the four wave of entrepreneurial wave, led to the revolution of the information industry, and in the era of artificial intelligence, it must be integrated light path, optical chip plus artificial intelligence, which It is a new revolution.

Optoelectronic chips are the infrastructure of the artificial intelligence era

Optoelectronic chips are the real infrastructure in the era of artificial intelligence, the infrastructure of 5G and the Internet of Things.

Everyone thinks that 5G is wireless communication. In 2018, Wei Leping, the former chief of China Telecom, once said that the entire 5G competition has now evolved into a battle for fiber infrastructure.

Whether it is mobile, telecommunications, and China Unicom, it is not the number of base stations, but the traffic of optical fiber communication.

Because, the frequency of the entire wireless communication is only a few tens of GHz (bandwidth), and the bandwidth of the optical fiber is more than 10 THz, that is, the flow of the optical fiber is several hundred times that of wireless communication.

So, today we see 4G base stations and 5G base stations, all using wireless communication transmission, but the optical modules and the entire optical infrastructure are transmitted through the base station.

So, if the light facilities are not good, there is no way to get more traffic at 5G. Moreover, 5G is only information transmission, and enters the era of artificial intelligence, more importantly, information acquisition and information processing, and information display.

The core of the future is the chip

From the five points of information acquisition, transmission, calculation, storage and display, the future is based on light as the core.

Integrated circuits, which began in the 1960s and 1970s, have developed to the extreme after so many years of development, so now is the best time point for the light path.

The entire IT industry is in the process of switching from electricity to light. Whether it is from acquisition, transmission, calculation, storage, display, it is now based on light, whether it is chips or devices.

Apple installed a light chip on the iPhone, which represents the coming of the consumer photon era. China’s current problem is to import 300 billion US dollars of chips, but the entire industry chain is now 5G and the Internet of Things, the core of the future is the chip, the chip is not solved, you have no chance to do the system.

The field of optoelectronic chip applications is the 5G to transmission and communication industry. In order to solve the problem of the chip, we established the Shaanxi Institute of Optoelectronic Integrated Circuit Pilot Technology, and also launched a fund of 1 billion yuan of early optoelectronic chips. The fund is the first fund in China to invest in early optical chip projects.

We have invested in more than 60 projects to support early chips. Inside these chips, there are active light-emitting devices, such as information, sensors, lasers, etc., including silicon light platforms.

The future is used in cloud computing, 5G, autonomous driving, or virtual reality, because all the scenes are the lowest level. If your chip can’t be done, it will be a big problem.

Therefore, we have made a series of layouts for this purpose. For example, in the field of mobile phones, we have made vcsel epitaxial wafers, lasers, DOE components, and have established companies. Like Yuyou Optoelectronics, it has already cooperated with Huawei and is a supplier of Huawei.

In the field of laser radar, automotive and artificial intelligence, we also have a range of lasers, such as silicon light radar, laser radar and automotive laser radar.

In the field of information transmission, we have a layout of PAM4, which is currently developing very well.

Information calculation, optical AI chip, can solve the problem of artificial intelligence calculation, because artificial intelligence mostly uses matrix algorithm. The artificial intelligence algorithm made in this way is even one thousandth lower than the delay of the electric chip, and the calculation efficiency can be improved a lot. Including quantum computing, the future is to be processed through semiconductor chips.

In the 5G field, the core is the chip. Because the system has no chance, the system must be done by big companies like Huawei and ZTE.

Starting in the field of 5G today, small companies have no possibility of entering a large terminal system, but there is an opportunity in the chip field.

Moreover, there are not many opportunities in the field of modules and packaging, because the biggest trend in China now is that the chip factory will directly supply the terminal application company.

A company like Huawei will either make its own chips or buy chips. And the company we invested in has already started to supply chips directly to Facebook. In the future, China has been one of the world’s largest manufacturing countries in the past 40 years, but in fact it is the world’s largest assembly country. Most of our companies are assembly companies. There are very few core technologies. In the future, Chinese companies, not chip companies, are system companies that integrate chips.

But, in the future, I think that Chinese companies are either chip companies or system companies with integrated chips. The middle module companies will basically be squeezed without any room for survival, and the optoelectronic chips and analog chips will More popular, because the traditional digital chip, Huawei Hays has done well enough.

Where is the future entrepreneurial opportunity?

There are still some entrepreneurial opportunities, leaving some analog and RF optical chips. In some of these areas, some technology giants have supply gaps, and there are still entrepreneurial opportunities.

So I hope that everyone will pay attention to this field. The future of optical chips will gradually replace the role of electric chips, and will occupy an increasingly high proportion in the entire chip field.

About the author:

Mi Lei, Ph.D., Xi’an Institute of Optics and Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, is the founding partner and co-CEO of China Science and Technology Co., Ltd., and the founder of the Hard Technology Innovation Alliance. Committed to building a hard-tech entrepreneurial rainforest ecology, and in-depth promotion of the transfer of scientific and technological achievements, in 2010, the first to put forward the concept of “hard technology”, set up a dual-innovation platform focused on “hard technology”, advocated the launch of focusing on “hard technology” Angel Fund has invested in more than 260 hard technology companies.