Jobs changed the game rules of the semiconductor industry

This year, the hottest topics are related to Steve Jobs. Therefore, when the draft of "Electronic Products World" was published, we would not be inevitably faced with the trend, and talk about the direction of Jobs' influence on the semiconductor industry.

Jobs did not create anything new, but he launched the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, which are fascinating to consumers, on the basis of music players, cell phones, and tablet PCs that have been available for a long time. Subverted or reshaped the music, mobile phone industry, opened the post-PC era, and established a digital copyright sales model through iTMS (iTunes Music Store).

Jobs "makes the information revolution not only easy to understand, but also intuitive and interesting, ... he brings happiness to millions of children and adults" (Obama), relying on "already had" chips And software. Jobs's innovative development mode of "chip + software + content" has greatly accelerated the pace of development in the mobile Internet era, and thus changed the game rules of the semiconductor industry.

The Times Makes a Hero, Jobs Promotes the Advance of the Times When Steve Jobs left the apple in 1985, the company’s life was not that good; but in the more than a decade before he returned to Apple in 1997, he failed to make anything in the “next generation computer”. Amazing results. However, in the short span of several years since he resumed his career, he has launched the iPod (2001), iTMS (2003), iPhone (2007) and iPad (2010) one after another. The trend has lifted Apple to the top of the global technology first brand. This once again proves an old proverb, the hero of the times: the evolution of the desktop Internet to the mobile Internet era, created Jobs. The trend of "desktop" to "move" is seen by many people. For example, as early as during the “Ninth Five-Year Plan” period, China promulgated a policy of extracting 5% of the initial telephone charge for the development of mobile phones, and arranged for technological breakthroughs in RF and baseband chips at the national level; Intel has also long seen The development of the Internet, but he also sold the chip unit for mobile phones and mobile devices to Marvell as late as 2006. Not seeing it, but only Jobs, not only the prophet but also the first, put the already existing MP3 and music library into the bag through the built-in 1.8-inch small hard drive, giving the user an "experience" to carry music anywhere, anytime. , thus making "experience" the most popular language in the market.

In the process of setting off the "experience" of digital products, Steve Jobs has fully shared the achievements of the horizontal division of labor in the semiconductor industry based on his long-term accumulation of personal computers. He has acquired the chip design company and has "recovered" the vertical integration mode at low cost. The iPad, which is a light-weight, re-experienced tablet PC, has pushed the already-embedded SoC to a new level of development and has pushed a smash hit standard and general-purpose CPU into an “unprecedented” god. altar.

Without Jobs, the mobile Internet will not be so prosperous as it is now. Jobs has pushed forward the pace of the times.

General-purpose CPU is no longer "significant" Attention hotspot has shifted Jobs to lead Apple's transformation, the main business from personal computers (PC) to digital consumer goods (Digital Goods), opened the era of smart terminals, thus disrupting the x86 CPU dominance of the world, transfer The focus of the entire industry, so that general-purpose CPU is no longer "expensive": mobile processor community heroes, "more than 16 processor companies and 4 IP vendors chase this market, but in the PC market is less than Five processor companies (JPR); mobile processors are growing at speeds of up to two digits and will reach 4 billion by 2014, far more than desktop (or universal) processors (IDC, In-Stat); one Intel China In response to media interviews, district executives said, “From the next generation of chips, we (Intel) will no longer be a universal chip.” Processors are rapidly moving toward a highly integrated SoC architecture with independent functional general-purpose processors. The relative number, but also in the market attention will gradually decline.

Apple Computer changed its name to Apple Computer (going to computer) in 2008, symbolizing the beginning of a new era, and also reflecting the changes in the silicon mainstream application market, that is, the silicon mainstream application market after experiencing the wave of application of home appliances and personal computers. At the end of the 1990s, the wave of digital consumer products was introduced; in the first two waves, silicon chips were integrated circuits or “parts” in the form of “mercury, mercury, and all-permeability” to be assembled into electronic end products. The current wave is Silicon chips are embedded in various electronic end products in the form of system-on-a-chip (SoC) and feature "communication computing, omnipresent." The basic core position of silicon has not changed, and only the sublimation of silicon technology has changed.

Mobile processor is another improvement of system-on-chip (SoC). SoC is a milestone in silicon technology. In 1995, SONY commissioned LSI Logic to design the first SoC for the company's influential PS game console, but then the SoC. However, it is a large "part" of the end product. After ten years of mature development of SoC, especially in the innovation of Steve Jobs and the wave of user infatuation, the embedded system based on SoC has been pushed from the embedded simple operating system and real-time operating system into many elements embedded in general-purpose computers. The development of a new stage, and in time conforms to the third special cycle of the semiconductor product application feature cycle (Xu's cycle), namely the special development cycle characterized by embedded SoC products from 2008 to 2018.

Steve Jobs has been miraculously adapting to the characteristics of semiconductor products that have entered the special cycle of SoC and the mainstream applications of silicon into digital consumer products, and has thus greatly promoted the development of SoC and SoC-based embedded smart digital consumer products.

Intel's transition from the silicon-centered business Steve Jobs succeeded in achieving a corner in the Internet era, and thus set off a new smart revolution that surpassed the PC, delivering a very loud and clear important message to the entire electronic information industry. Many companies (including Intel) are inspired. This revelation was answered at the Intel Information Technology Summit in the fall of 2010. Intel’s President and CEO, Paul Otellin, delivered the following message on the first day in the “The Future of Smart” keynote: The number of smart device shipments was 2.8 billion in 2010 and is expected to double in 2014. This trend is driving The growth of the entire industry. Intel used to be a chip company and engaged in silicon and its related businesses. Now that computing is no longer confined to personal computers, computing will be ubiquitous. Therefore, Intel must implement self-reform and step out of the traditional business centered on silicon and devote itself to becoming a computing company. Solution provider.

Intel through a series of huge acquisitions involving software, communications and other services, is a step-by-step implementation of the transition from a semiconductor company to a computing company: Intel's strategic focus has shifted from smart devices to software. This transformation is just as important as the transition to abandoning the memory business in the 1980s (Ou De Ning), but the nature is completely different. The former is only a product technology transformation in the chip field, and this time it is the transition of the entire business model.

The computer (Apple) company went into silicon and "hardened with softness," while the semiconductor company (Intel) went out of silicon and "hardened with softness." This fact shows that in the era of embedded computing, characterized by "connecting intelligence and ubiquitous," neither silicon nor silicon can be the center. Silicon and software have entered a highly integrated development period. The company’s business model has also returned from “horizontal” to “vertical,” which is a spiral of dialectical development. It has not only changed the game rules of the semiconductor industry, but also It will also deeply affect the development of the entire electronic information industry.

While Steve Jobs's "red speculation" of the mobile Internet, he continues to influence the evolution of the times.

Jobs had criticized Flash software widely used on 100% desktop computers and 85% of mainstream websites before his death. Although this move attracted a lot of objections, he still disables Flash on all iPad, iPhone and other iOS (Apple operating system) platforms. Now, as HTML5 provides more powerful features such as images, storage, and word processing, it not only forces Flash to decline, but also enables editing, web pages, browsing, audiovisual, and game operations that were previously only possible on PC operating systems. Will be moved to the browser, that is, in the "cloud computing" era, in the maturity of HTML5, users can complete all the work done in the PC OS through the browser (such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari, IE9, etc.) . The decreasing number of software installed on the PC OS means that the operating system will be less important.

The electronic information industry is still evolving, and computing technology is upgrading once every 10-15 years. What is the next "curve"? when? (If it happens in 2018, it will confirm the semiconductor circulation again.) Who should turn over? This is a question worth thinking about.