The scale of China's core artificial intelligence (AI) industry has exceeded CNY400 billion and the number of related enterprises has exceeded 3,000, with major breakthroughs being made in key core technologies such as smart chips and open-source frameworks, Xiao Yaqing, Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said at a major industry conference in Tianjin. Innovation in products such as intelligent sensors and intelligent connected vehicles saw continuous improvement, and the whole industrial system also further improved, Xiao said during the opening ceremony of the sixth World Intelligence Congress (WIC) on June 24.
During the WIC 136 projects were signed with total investment worth CNY84.9 billion, covering areas such as innovative industries, high-end equipment, biomedicine and other emerging sectors. The convention gave awards for 10 excellent cases of intelligent technology innovation, including “intelligent manufacturing of modern Chinese medicine” by Tasly Pharmaceutical Group, a factory digital platform established by Haier Group, and an intelligent transportation solution for automated container terminals set up by the second container terminal of Tianjin port.
As one of the leading events in the field of smart technology globally, WIC has made many substantial achievements in the past five years, and also attracted representatives from global industry to talk about the latest progress in intelligent transformation. AI is also widely regarded as the next battlefield in the tech competition between China and the U.S., with the latter intensifying its crackdown on China over the past years.
Xiao noted that the deployment of the intelligent information infrastructure in China has greatly accelerated – about 1.7 million 5G base stations have been built, 150 large-scale industrial internet platforms have been developed, and more than 78 million sets of connected industrial equipment have been installed. Leading telecom carrier China Mobile has set up over 850,000 5G base stations, accounting for one-third of the world's total. Xiao emphasized that it is necessary to accelerate the construction of intelligent information infrastructure, orderly promote the construction of 5G and gigabit optical networks, improve the layout of new infrastructure such as the industrial internet, data centers, and the Internet of Things (IoT), and reasonably deploy supercomputing centers. China continued to be the leading growth market for expenditure on cloud infrastructure in the first quarter of 2022, according to a report by Canalys. Such expenditure on the Chinese mainland hit USD7.3 billion in the first three months, up 21% from a year ago, accounting for 13% of the global total, said Canalys, as the Global Times reports.
In related news, Chinese electronic design automation (EDA) software firm Empyrean Technology, one of China’s best hopes in reducing reliance on imported chip design tools, has received approval from securities regulators to go public in Shenzhen. A successful initial public offering (IPO) could help the Beijing-headquartered company raise more than CNY2.55 billion, according to Empyrean’s prospectus. The firm’s backers include its largest shareholder – state-owned China Electronics Corp (CEC) – which owns a 26% stake, as well as the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, known as the “Big Fund”. Empyrean said the IPO proceeds would go into several EDA development projects, including building analogue and digital chip design and verification tools.
Despite being a small player with just a 6% share in the home market as of 2020, Empyrean is banking on a state-led push to increase China’s self-sufficiency in strategic technologies, including EDA software, to expand its business. Empyrean, which has research facilities in Nanjing, Chengdu, Shanghai and Shenzhen, was founded in 2009, a year after China rolled out a special project to boost its capacity in key electronic devices, high-end general purpose central processing units and basic software products. The company listed three development goals in its prospectus: help China “plug holes” in key EDA software categories by 2023, “fully substitute” foreign design tools with domestic versions and create a complete ecosystem of software tools needed for chip design by 2025, and become a global leader in EDA software by 2030.
Chinese semiconductor design companies have increased in number over the past few years, but most still rely on imported EDA software. Many industry professionals have warned that China relies more on foreign technologies in EDA tools than in chip manufacturing, having few substitutes if access to imports was cut. Currently, roughly 90% of the global EDA market is controlled by American firms Cadence Design Systems, Synopsis, and Mentor Graphics.
